Christ had I missed that.
‘You and me both.’
You revved the Mini Cooper. Then we roared off into the light of day. Together.
14
MAY 1855 WATFORD
You had to stand still for a bloody long time if you didn’t want the photograph to come out blurred. If you moved, it’d look like you were a ghost, hazy at the edges. Sometimes whole families turned out that way. But not often because papa was one of the best at his art.
Papa employed every trick of the photographers’ trade: hidden props to tuck behind folk’s necks or covers to stick over a mama’s head to render them invisible, whilst at the same time stopping their babes from kicking up a shine because they feared they’d been abandoned.
If you know what you’re looking for, you can make out these spooks in the pictures.
Papa was always inventing some better process, lens or plate. His excitement was like a little kid’s. It was bloody infectious. Mama would sigh and leave us to the dark room, my sisters clinging to her apron, because I was of the same kidney: there was nothing more blinding than this weird new science.
I was obsessed by the way you could capture one moment. I knew it wasn’t forever. Photographs faded. Yet it was still someone’s squirming Soul laid in the palm of your hand. Power over the natural world, without trickery or magic. I understood it and (young as I was), papa respected me enough to share the voyage of discovery.
‘Photography’s derived from the Greek for light and writing,’ papa once told me. ‘We write with light.’
Mama and papa arrived in Watford along with the whistling squeal of the London and Birmingham Railway in 1837, as part of the influx from the inner city, which transformed the old shops with their tiny windows and dim interiors, into bright new stores - like papa’s photographic studio.
See, here’s the thing, where there’d been just one long street with foul alleyways rising from the River Colne to Cassiobury Park, it transformed around me as I grew too, into a new world of the printing industry and shops as good as any in the City (and that’s not simply my pride speaking). Then there was Cassiobury House: a romantic, gothic pile, to which posh birds and famous bleeders gallivanted back and forth from London - and had their portraits taken by papa.
We also returned to London on quests for supplies, equipment or to hang out with other photographers in studios or coffeehouses. Bloody hell, the powerful aroma of coffee was like something exploding right on the back of my tongue. It was the smell of adventure. It always will be for me. Very quickly, I came to be viewed as papa’s partner in crime.
And London? Christ it was alive, expanding ever further and busier every time we visited, bustling like a banjo, as much with death as with life, both cheek by jowl: a chimneysweep’s boy (younger than me), choking up blood, as he staggered by us, black head to foot, a crawler in the shadow of a doorway, twitching under scarlet rags, nothing but a bag of bones, a blue-smocked butcher whistling, laden with a tray, which groaned under fresh joints of lamb and an abandoned newborn, grey and alien, rotting on a dungheap, ignored by everything but the flies that teemed over it.
Before we’d head back to the hiss and screech of the train, papa would take me to stand on the western parapet of London Bridge, amidst sailors in red and blue flannel shirts or nor’westers and the stink of smoke, to peer over at the tugboats, steamers and paddleboats, which were sailing in and out, on the great silver tongue of the Thames.
Papa would point out which were for passengers and which cargo, listing - as if they were no different to the chemicals we experimented with - what were in their holds: spices, tea, sugar, indigo, rum, wool, French wine or my beloved coffee.
Then I’d imagine the faraway lands they’d come from (or were sailing to). And that I was travelling with them.
It was, however, more than simply envisioning.
I felt it in my gut: this burning need to escape…I didn’t know what…all right then, my own skin. It was too tight. Something in me wanted to blaze brighter.
I knew the world was too large to leave it there in darkness.
One cold morning, I’d settled myself on the Oriental rug in front of the spitting fire in our small drawing room, whilst Nora and Polly played with their doll, which papa had made out of wood and wool. My sisters’ shrill little voices were a starling-like chattering.
I lay on my elbows, flicking through the heavy account books, which I’d discovered at the back of the studio.
Papa had never banned me from touching anything; he was eccentric like that. He’d say the world’s for exploring because that’s when discoveries are made and rules crush natural curiosity.
I loved him for that.
You spoil that boy, mama was fond of saying. But she didn’t stop him, and I saw the way her peepers danced when she said it.
I had papa’s books laid out in front of me like a precious find, with this fast heartbeat, which I always had when I’d unearthed something new to be examined. I loved the numbers, which were in neat rows in papa’s slanting handwriting: money in, money out, names and dates.
All right then, so there was another reason I spent every hour I could lurking at the back of the studio, sniffing the toxic chemicals, which papa mixed in our night-time experiments or listening to the inane yakking of the ladies and gentlemen, when they came to collect the finished product.
I was desperate to understand why my brain worked the way it did.
If a perfect photograph was a scientific possibility through writing with light, then I wasn’t cursed, demon possessed or set for Bedlam (and I’d lain trembling in bed terrified of all three possibilities). If there was a rational explanation for how an image could be caught like that, then I wasn’t a freak.
When I heard the door open, I glanced up.
It was a surprise to see papa frowning; he usually looked like an excited kid, or so deep in thought that he was wandering through another world. ‘Why are you reading those?’
‘I like the numbers, sir.’
At last Papa smiled, as he ruffled my hair. ‘Then read away.’
Papa collapsed into the upholstered armchair, dragging the broadsheet, with a crisp shake of the pages, in front of his nose.
I slammed the account book closed. ‘All finished.’
Papa peered at me over the top of the Times, as he reached for his clay pipe. ‘Finished, Thomas?’
‘But…are the two columns not meant to balance? There’s a discrepancy of nine guineas on page five, no amount entered for Mrs Doubleday on page 14 and on page 27 a shortfall of 16 guineas and seven shillings…’ Papa crumpled the Times into his lap and stared at me. Nora and Polly stopped playing at the sound, gazing over at us with their large peepers. When Papa held out his hand, I passed over the book to show him. ‘There are more…’
Bloody hell, I’d done it now. The camouflage had slipped; my true form was revealed. What would any of them do now the freak within had been unmasked? My pulse beat so hard I thought my heart would explode.
Papa was flicking through the pages, running his finger down the numbers to tote them up.
That’s my problem right there: I never got when to keep my gob shut.
I watched each action closely, flinching at the bang, as finally papa shut the book and placed it down. He threw the Times aside. When papa pushed himself up, for the first time he felt to me like a towering god of justice, poised to give me a thorough slating, rather than my fellow pioneer in this world.
I scrambled up - my nut down - unable to meet his eye.
So, this was it then.
I was surprised to feel papa’s warm hand on my shoulder, as he said softly, ‘You are a miracle. A human camera. My little Light.’
When I looked up into papa’s peepers, they were flaming with pride.
As if they’d sensed but not understood the tension and had now been jolted out of it, my sisters sprang up. They clasped hands and danced round, like they were playing “Ring a Rin
g o’Roses”, whilst they chanted little Light, little Light.
I collapsed in a giggling pile of relief: it was going to be all right.
Then papa was laughing too and the quiet drawing room was filled with our hullabaloo. It felt like we could take on anything. Mama stuck her nut round the door in astonishment at the uproar.
You don’t get many moments in life like that: pure and perfect joy. In my First Life that was my only one. Yet because I was a human camera I captured it with perfect clarity. I could return to it many times over, which was a good thing. Because I bloody needed to.
Six weeks after that, I was playing behind the house with Nora and Polly under the shade of the weeping willow because mama had told me to keep an eye.
I’d positioned my sisters, like sentinels, with these shining silver halfcrowns, which I’d liberated from papa’s study for the experiment.
The girls were normally only permitted to learn music and art, like their wanker of a tutor insisted, and I wanted to share with them the wonders, which I was discovering and yet they were barred from. If I wasn’t careful, they’d turn into right ninnies…unless they had my help.
My sisters held on dead tight to those halfcrowns, almost hopping on the spot with expectation because this was grown up stuff, until they got the angle right. Then the sun hit the halfcrowns and reflected.
The light was so bright, it got Polly in the peepers first. She looked like she was going to blubber. I dashed to her, shushing her, before shoving her across until – bam – the ray bounced between the coins and onto the trailing branches of the weeping willow, where it danced and flitted like a fairy.
Then my sisters gasped, laughing at the light.
That’s when mama stumbled into the garden, her face all screwed up.
I knew straightaway something had happened to papa.
It’s like you hate yourself for knowing but a wolf awakes deep in your gut and growls at the danger, so you just know, all right?
Papa was dead - killed cold - struck down by a hansom cab, which had been transporting one of those posh fellas to Cassiobury House. It’d been driven by a drunken bastard, too soaked in gin to realise (or care), what he’d done.
The banks swooped in and took the studio. Because those numbers in the account books? Yeah, I’d been right: the two columns should’ve balanced.
Me? I was sent away to an orphan school in London. I never saw my mama or sisters again.
Instead, I was worked like a bloody servant by the stuck up boys, whose parents could afford to pay the fees, when I wasn’t getting a taste of the birch.
Suddenly rules mattered. Everything was banned. And the world was no longer for exploring but a prison to be endured. The light was dimmed.
I fagged for a sadistic little bastard, who never let me forget I was only there (and not in the workhouse), by the grace of charity. No one ever let me forget that again.
Say thank you, Blickle… As I was kneeling at his feet… Say thank you, Blickle… As the birch swished down… Say thank you, Blickle… As he held me struggling under his sweaty brute weight and… Say… No, please, no… I said, say thank you, Blickle…
I learnt to hide my memory and my mind. I didn’t want to be seen as more of an outsider or exhibit to be gawped at than I already was. Any I did risk showing, the teachers sniffed at as low cunning. They were soon snarling that I was a reprobate, when I took to brawling as the only way to garner some scant regard amongst the other lads, as well as to feed the anger, which balled so tight in me some days I was nothing but a blazing sun of rage.
What never went away, was one simple feeling: to lose everything in a moment. And so to be beholden - entirely at another’s mercy.
Powerless doesn’t even cover it, love.
It wasn’t until I was eighteen that my uncle belatedly remembered his duty and found a junior clerk position for me at Overend, Gurney and Company and well…you know how that ended.
There was one thing, which I could hold onto through my First Life, death and into my Blood Life.
You always asked why I was called Light – said my parents must be right hippies?
All right then, so when you’re elected you get to choose a new name, like a christening. It’s the first initiation into Blood Life. The symbolic shedding of humanity. Or that’s how some see it: the cleansing of their First Life and a bloody liberation.
But for me? My naming tied me closer to what had been important.
I’m not alone in that. We use it to bind ourselves to our First Lives, loves and hurts, so we’ll never forget what it was to be human. Because we’ll never be human again. But we can remember the whispered spectre of it. We can fight to hold onto the edges. The taste.
That once we loved and were loved.
So I chose Light.
And I remembered.
DECEMBER 1968 YORKSHIRE
The black shadow of Ilkley Moor bled out of the weak evening light. The mists were thick around the hills, swallowing the road; the Mini Cooper’s lights blurred. Up ahead the stone, whitewashed walls of your father’s house rose up in the dark.
Now look, it hadn’t been my idea. In fact, I’d have taken you bleeding anywhere, rather than back to your wanker of a father. But you’d insisted. It seems you believed in family more than me. At least in times of need. And yeah, this counted. Of course, your family couldn’t be as psychotic or dysfunctional as my Blood Lifer one.
Although from what I’d seen, yours weren’t that far behind.
We’d hidden out on quiet country lanes, which had given me time to heal, blacking out the car’s windows with rugs, so we could sleep in safety during the day and drive by night because we didn’t want to give the old git a heart attack when he saw me. At least, you didn’t.
First, I’d forced you to take me back to London, although not without days of furious rowing. You were right but you still took me back there: it was non-negotiable.
I had to snatch the Triton, you see, sentimental berk that I am. You get attached to things when you have so little. In a century of living, she was all I had to show for my life. Without my Triton, it was like I was no more than a shade.
When I’d slunk into Advance, it’d felt deserted. There was no noise or movement. No pulsing thrum of my Author, muse and liberator.
Settling back over the Triton, it’d been like having a part of myself back, which I’d only dully sensed had been missing.
You drove towards your father’s house in the Mini Cooper, as I roared up on the Triton, weaving between the deep, frozen ruts and fighting to retain control, when the bike skidded over the ice. At least one of the blinding things about leathers is they keep out the cold.
We swung onto the track, pulling up in front of a farmhouse, which was buried in the lower slopes of the moor.
As soon as you knocked on the oak door, I knew something was up.
There came this kind of shambling sound and then an unsteady wrenching, as bolts were dragged back. When the door was hauled open, and the dim light puddled out, the hulking outline of your father was silhouetted. But he was swaying, as if he was at sea: he was sodding plastered.
Your father’s trousers were stained. His braces hung loose and his shirtsleeves were rolled back. He squinted out at us. ‘Kathy?’
You barged past your father into the sitting room, where brass horseshoes hung from the white walls above the two frayed armchairs, whilst a wood fire spat embers.
When I sloped after you, your father twisted and blocked us in. His bleary peepers darted from me to you and then back again.
‘What’s,’ your father tossed his nut at me, ‘doin’ here?’
‘He’s with me.’
‘Aye.’
They stared at each other. You fidgeted. ‘We need… Can we stay here? Just for…a bit.’
Your father snorted. ‘What dus’t a reckon?’
I could’ve wrung your father’s wrinkled old neck. I hurled myself down into his worn armchair, allowin
g the warmth of the burning logs to thaw me, as I stared up boldly at him. I raised my eyebrow. Your father glared at me but didn’t move.
‘I reckon,’ Kathy took one step towards her father, ‘after everything mother and me--’
‘Don’t thee talk to me about thine mother--’
‘Why not?’ A flash of rage; you flamed with it. ‘Nowt wrong with our family was there? Nowt wrong with you?’
‘Thee’ll get a right belt in a--’
‘Why hide anymore? We’re all unmasked here.’
Your father stumbled towards you. I didn’t stop him. You didn’t need rescuing. Not like that. If anything, he did. ‘Thee fair touched lass?’
When you laughed, it was like something had been knocked loose. I’d never heard you sound like that before: it was haunting. And it was all my fault.
Buggering hell, I’d broken you.
Was this why we kept the existence of Blood Lifers secret, except to the elect? Because First Lifers couldn’t cope with the shock of this knowledge?
You shoved closer to your father. Your hand pressed hard to his chest, where his heart would be pumping the blood pounding through him. ‘I want to see the monster. You’re no man, are you?’
I flung myself out of the chair. I grasped your arm, hauling you away from your father.
Coming here had been a mistake. Why had I let you persuade me? See here’s the thing, when have I ever been able to convince you out of anything?
‘Time to go, luv?’
Your father, however, confused and rat-arsed as he was, had now cottoned on to your insults and was pissed. His mug had deepened to a mottled purple, as he stomped nearer, forcing our backs to the fire and roasting our coolers on the flames. ‘Thee are nowt but a mardy scrubber. Just like thine mother--’
That’s when you cracked him. I hadn’t even seen the brass poker in your hand.
Then your father fell.
Interesting how the giant of a bloke only took one hit to kill, like smashing an egg.
Blood Dragons (Rebel Vampires Book 1) Page 22
