TAINTED LOVE

by Anna Chilvers

  It lasted less than a year. A tiny portion of the life I have lived. Yet I would happily give up everything, past and future, to live that time again. Even Charles. Even Richard. No one came near him in my affections until I met Andy.

  He was called to war and he left for France and I never saw him again. My Daniel. He never even knew that I was carrying our child.

  When the Quakers came knocking on my door after the war was over, asking for contributions to a monument, I was happy to help. Its purpose was to celebrate peace rather than war. I had nothing else I wanted to spend my money on. I hated the war that had taken Daniel from me and I hated the country that needed him. The Quakers were surprised at my generosity.

  It wasn’t only the Quakers involved, of course, as I realised when the planning got under way.

  I found I wanted to offer more than money. My grief over Daniel’s loss had been so devastating that I had sunk into apathy. If it hadn’t been for the child I was carrying, I might have been tempted to take my life in the hopes of finding Daniel in the next world, or at least sinking into pain-free oblivion. Even after Charles was born, the world continued grey and empty. As soon as I handed the child to the nurse I sank back into listlessness.

  This project brought me back to life. It gave me something to focus on and something to do. I wanted to be actively involved. There were difficulties of course, because of my gender, but I threatened to withdraw my funding if they didn’t include me. That would have delayed the project significantly so they gave in. On my behalf, meetings had to be moved from the Masonic Lodge to the Town Hall, and some of the other committee members cast me resentful glances.

  The opening ceremony had to be changed to accommodate my presence as well. I wouldn’t back down. We marched up the hill to the monument together. Some of them wore their regalia and carried swords, and I carried Charles on my hip. The Master of Ceremonies looked aghast when I arrived with the boy in my arms, but there was nothing he could do.

  They hoped I would stand back, let them hold ceremony whilst I kept my distance, but that was not my plan and I thrust myself into the thick of it, which was how the accident happened.

  The Master of Ceremonies lifted his sword high into the air and the weight of it made him lose his footing slightly. He shifted his arms in an attempt to regain his balance, and the blade came slicing through the air into poor Charles’s head.

  There was a dreadful silence which seemed to go on forever before the child’s wailing filled the air. Blood was gushing from the wound, dripping onto his shirt and collar and onto my dress. I gasped, then lifted my skirts and ran.

  The nurse was shocked when we arrived home covered in gore and together we examined the wound. It wasn’t deep, but the boy had lost a lot of blood from his small body and he was weak and pale. He was not unconscious, but his crying had stopped and he was listless, letting us move him as we wished. His eyes were dull and he didn’t speak. I could see the nurse was worried.

  That night we took it in turns to sit with him. I put him to bed in my own room that I had shared with Daniel. The bleeding had stopped and we had bandaged his head. He slept, unmoving, his body so small in the vast bed. I was scared that Death was going to take another from me. I paced the room and gazed out across the moors to the starry sky. It was a moonlit night and the new monument showed up as a dark pointed silhouette.

  It was during my second watch, in the small hours of the morning, that Death came. I heard him first, a soft swishing sound at the window. When I looked I saw a dark shape moving like a wraith. He had come for Charles and my heart filled with anger. I rushed to the bed and threw my body across my child’s. His skin was cold, but when I placed my ear against his chest I could hear his heart still beating faintly. I held him against me, hoping to give him some of my own warmth.

  The window opened with a loud crash as the frame was thrust back against the wall, and cold air rushed into the room. The dark shape circled the bed and Charles’ heartbeat was getting weaker and weaker. The end had come for him.

  I was desperate. Death had taken Daniel from me, and was now going to take Charles, his child. I screamed aloud.

  ‘Don’t take him. Please don’t take him.’

  The shape still circled. Charles was cold, his heartbeat barely a murmur.

  Then I heard the voice.

  ‘He has been marked. I come to collect my own.’

  I screamed again.

  ‘No, please. He is but a child. Take me instead.’

  A stillness fell over the room. Nothing moved in the darkness. I held Charles’ body to my chest and looked about the room wildly.

  ‘Are you still there? Do you hear me? Take me instead.’

  Death loomed up before me and spoke in his soft voice.

  ‘If you give yourself to me voluntarily, I can do with you what I want.’

  ‘I don’t care. Spare my boy.’

  ‘I may make you one like myself, or one of the other countless beings of this world who neither live nor receive the comfort of death.’

  ‘Please, he is nearly gone. Give him back his life and take mine.’

  Death thrust his face in mine and I saw into the depths of his eyes. In them I could see the years stretching ahead of me and I knew that I would never see Daniel again in this life or any other, and that my life would go on and on and on. But I would not have him steal my son as well as my husband, and I stared back unblinking.

  Death’s lips brushed against mine. ‘So be it, my angel,’ he said.

  And I sank back into blackness.

  The young man blinked at me as the dust cloud dispersed.

  ‘You!’ he said. ‘I’d almost convinced myself you were a dream.’

  ‘Well you must be dreaming again, for here I am. What are you doing?’

  ‘Making a skylight for the stairwell. We’re doing some repairs.’

  ‘So no more plunging into the dark.’

  He frowned. ‘That was a stupid idea anyway.’

  ‘You’ve decided to be the bringer of light?’

  He grinned. ‘Mr S is making me do this in my lunch breaks, as it’s not actually a repair, and it was my idea.’

  I looked up to where the older man was suspended from a rope.

  ‘He’s fixing on a lightning conductor.’

  ‘He won’t mind you talking to me?’

  ‘It’s my lunch break.’

  I looked about, but there didn’t seem to be signs of any food. He was thin. I wondered who looked after him.

  ‘What happened with those boys?’ I asked.

  He looked at me with surprise. It had probably been the talk of the town, filling the newspapers. He would have expected me to know all the details.

  ‘They got them out, eventually. A policeman dived in, and some others and I went back in too. It was the next morning when they found them. They were all dead.’

  I turned away. ‘Their poor mothers.’

  ‘We did what we could, you and I,’ the young man said. ‘We couldn’t have saved them.’

  His words were a question. It must have been preying on his mind.

  ‘It was too late even before we hit the water,’ I said.

  ‘I saw them up here,’ he said. ‘They were running and laughing,’

  He rubbed at his sore eyes with the back of his wrist.

  ‘You should have some protection for your eyes. All that stone dust might damage your sight.’

  ‘I do have some.’ He indicated a pair of goggles on the top of his work bag a few yards away. I picked them up and held them out to him, but he didn’t take them.

  ‘It seems that pain is my lot in life so I may as well embrace it.’

  I laughed. ‘That sounds very bitter for one so young.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m alone.’

  ‘I am alone too. Is your solita
ry situation new to you?’

  ‘I was to be married but my betrothed has forsaken me for another. My family are all dead. I lodge with Mr S at the stonemason’s yard. That’s my life now.’

  He was young and life would change for him.

  But an idea had entered my head.

  Charles had been my friend and companion throughout his life until his death of old age. I no longer had a son and I missed him sorely.

  I sat down on the stone floor next to the hole the young man was making.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.

  ‘Richard.’

  ‘Richard, tell me about yourself. What are your dreams?’

  18. Richard

  The first bite is just a beginning and usually also the end. The first bite binds the victim to you only lightly. Until the wound has healed they will dwell on you in their thoughts. They may seek out your company and they will feel a physical bond as their blood feeds your body. By the time the skin has closed over, their blood will have nourished you and you will have no further need of each other. If you are a stranger to them and never return, you will remain only as a memory or a fragment of a dream.

  The second bite has a bond of iron and can only occur when the first wound is completely healed. This is the bite that makes the victim want you. They will turn to you with their body and their soul and they will seek you out, desperate if they can’t find you. They will follow you across desert or mountain or snowy wastes. They will offer themselves to you, prostrate themselves before you. While their blood is in your body they will desire you like a powerful drug. They will hunger for your teeth. But if you bite them a third time before the second wound has healed they will die. The second bite is not to be undertaken lightly, best done only as part of a turning. After the wound heals, the victim’s desperate hunger will fade, but will never completely leave them. They may live a normal life, but they will carry with them a yearning for something else, which they will never quite understand.

  In a turning, the second bite must completely heal before the third can be attempted. The third bite will complete the process.

  I’ve had a hundred and twenty years of first bites. I’ve never turned anyone. I take what I need for food then leave, and I rarely see the victim again. It’s mostly girls and they’re usually drunk. That way they don’t remember clearly, they think the wound must have occurred during some drunken accident. I live as a scrap of memory in the minds of thousands who have nourished me.

  My constant companion has been my ‘mother’ Meg, and we have travelled the world together. We have lived in cities and deserts, forests and ghettos. We have travelled in the Americas, crossed the African plains, followed the circus through China and Russia and gone walkabout in Australia. We have wandered the battlefields of two world wars, feeding on the dying. Sometimes we have joined with others of our kind in ones or twos or even small communities hidden in the depths of the largest cities. Twice Meg has turned a man who she thought to make a third in our small family, but neither of them stayed. They went their own way when it became clear how much Meg demanded from them in intensity and devotion. They could not satisfy her, could not be the lover she desired. So they left us and we were once again mother and son.

  Life had been full of interest and I’d seen and done many things, but recently I had become restless. Meg sometimes went off on her own and then I was lonely. I began to hate my victims, young girls and boys who were happy to throw their arms around me and receive my kiss on their neck in return for a couple of vodkas. Who would wake the next day rubbing the soreness of their skin with the vague memory of a tall dark stranger. And even that memory would fade over a week or two. I wanted someone who wanted me.

  It wasn’t a new feeling to me, of course. I had been desperate for love before Meg found me. My fiancée, Laura, had left me for another, a lad whose father had a lathe and who had good prospects and strong thighs. I was devastated, but it would have passed. If Meg hadn’t turned up when she did, I would have found another girl, because life ran strongly in my veins. I think I missed the romps with Laura behind the hawthorn hedge at sunset more than anything else about her. When I tried to remember her I could summon up a length of inner thigh, milk white and covered with the finest hairs that glinted in the evening sunlight; a fall of blonde hair across my belly; the crease and roll of flesh where her breasts rose beneath her arms. I could remember her laugh and her intake of breath. But I couldn’t see her face or remember anything we had talked about.

  We were in Paris living in a small commune near the Père Lachaise cemetery. I had been out the night before at a club and I was satiated. I slept deeply into the day and woke before nightfall. I had dreamed and the sensations from my dream filled my waking mind. I was walking through woodland and I knew the path well. There were bluebells and there was a girl beside me holding my hand. I couldn’t turn to look at her, but I could feel the warmth of her palm against mine, the grasp of her finger tips on the back of my hand. I tried to see more of her, but my head would not move. In my peripheral vision I thought I could see blonde hair swaying as she walked, but she was half a step behind me and I wasn’t sure. When I woke I put my hands together. My right palm was warm and tingled from the girl’s touch.

  The feeling stayed with me all through that night in the centre of Paris. I stretched my fingers and felt human warmth in my palms. When I lay down to rest in the early hours of the morning I hoped to dream the dream again, but didn’t. I woke with longing in my palms and an empty hunger in my chest.

  I went in search of Meg and told her that I wanted to go home.

  19. Lauren

  At breakfast Dad said he thought we needed to talk and my heart sank. It was bound to be about my mum. I gave him a quick smile and said I wasn’t sure what I was doing later.

  So when Richard texted to ask if I wanted to walk up to the monument after college, I jumped at it.

  ‘I’ve been reading about stonemasons,’ he told me when we met in town.

  ‘Not freemasons?’

  ‘Hmmm, sometimes the same thing,’ he said. ‘The monument could come into your project too. It was built by Unitarians.’

  I looked at him in surprise. ‘Yes, I just found that out.’

  I had a couple of frees on Wednesday afternoon so there was plenty of time before it got dark, and the sun was shining. A stroll on the moors sounded like a fine idea.

  We set off through the Field Estate which covers the lower sweep of the hill. Although Richard remembered some things about the place pretty well, other things confused him. As we walked along the track at the back of the houses he said ‘Are you sure this is the way?’ and I laughed. I’d come this way more times than I could remember. When the path rose up higher than the houses he seemed to get his bearings.

  I was surprised at his speed again. I asked him to slow down at one point when the path veered up steeply. He laughed and held out his hand.

  ‘Come on, I’ll pull you up.’

  I hesitated. Going for a walk with him was one thing, going for a walk holding hands was another.

  ‘Just up the hill.’

  ‘Ok.’

  I put my hand in his and his fingers closed around mine. We were still in the woods and the beech trees were whispering into the spaces beneath them. I didn’t want to listen. Richard’s hands were large and cool and, although he didn’t seemed to be pulling me very hard, the hill did seem a lot easier, almost effortless.

  ‘I walk a lot,’ he said. ‘I have strong legs.’

  After the beech woods, the path rises steeply past an old stone farmhouse and then turns to the right and levels out. It continues at this height for a mile or so before rising again up to Langfield Moor. When it levelled I tugged at my hand and he let it go. He rubbed his palms together.

  ‘You have warm hands,’ he said.

  I liked it better when he was being
sarcastic. I knew how to answer him then.

  ‘I’ll race you to that stile,’ I said, and ran.

  At first I thought he wasn’t going to race. I ran and he stayed behind. At least I could stop and wait for him at the stile, get my breath back. But then when I was nearly there he sped past me. He wasn’t wearing his black coat today. He was wearing a leather jacket which zipped up at the front, and jeans, and as he ran I noticed how long his legs were, how powerful he looked when he moved. He reminded me of a deer running in the forest, or maybe a big cat. I thought about Peter. He’s really fast, but I thought Richard would give him a run for his money. It would probably depend on the terrain. Peter is nimble and his hooves mean that he can leap and race across country and on stony ground. On the flat Richard might be able to beat him.

  He was waiting for me at the stile.

  ‘You’re fast.’

  ‘I can’t resist a challenge,’ he said.

  We walked at a pace after that, side by side but no more hand holding, even when the path got steep again. He was different today. I kept my gaze on the path in front of me. He still wore his sunglasses so his eyes were covered, but I felt that if I looked at him I might say something with my own.

  It was cold on the moor even though the sun was shining, and the heather was wailing in the wind. We walked around the base of the monument and leaned into the gusts. Sometimes up there you think you’ll blow right away, and when you can’t bear it any more it’s time to go inside. The stone staircase spirals up the centre, plunges you into darkness, then thrusts you out again into a higher level.