Whitstable (2 page)

He stared at the inert typewriter in the study, the signed photographs and letter-headed notepaper stacked beside it, the avalanche of mail from fans and well-wishers spilling copiously, unattended, across the floor from the open bureau, littering the carpet. He pulled the door shut, unable to bear looking at it.

Hardly thinking what he was doing, he re-entered the kitchen and spooned two scoops of Ty-phoo into the tea pot and was about to pour in boiling water when he froze.

The sudden idea that Joyce might pop round became horrifically possible, if not probable. She wasn’t far away. No more than a short car journey, in fact, and she could be here and he would be trapped. Heavens, he could not face that. That would be unbearable. Instantly he realised he had to get out. Flee.

Unwillingly, sickeningly, he had no choice but to brave the day.

Upstairs he shook off his slippers, replacing them with a pair of bright yellow socks. Put on his grey flannel slacks, so terribly loose around the waist. Needing yet another hole in the belt. Shirt. Collar gaping several sizes too big now, too. Tie. No time for tie. Forget tie. Why was he forced to do this? Why was he forced to leave his home when he didn’t want to? He realised he was scared. The scaremonger, scared. Of
this
. What if he saw somebody? What if they talked to him? Could he be impolite? Unthinkable. Could he tell them how he really felt? Impossible. What then?

He told himself he was an actor. He would
act
.

Back in the hall he pulled on his winter coat and black woollen hat, the kind fishermen wear, tugging it down over his ears, then looped his scarf round his neck like an over-eager schoolboy. February days could be bright, he told himself, and he found his sunglasses on the mantelpiece in the living room sitting next to a black and white photograph of his dead wife. At first he avoided looking at it, then kissed his trembling fingertips and pressed them gently to her cheek. His fingerprints remained on the glass for a second before fading away.

***

He walked away from 3 Seaway Cottages, its curtains still drawn, giving it the appearance of a house in slumber. As a married couple they’d bought it in the late fifties with money he’d earned from
The Hound of the Baskervilles
, because having a place by the sea—especially here, a town they’d been visiting for years—would be good for Helen’s breathing. “You have two homes in life,” she’d said, “the one you’re born in and another you find,” and this one they’d found, with its big, tall windows for painting under the heavens and enjoying the estuary views across Shell Ness, clapboard sides like something from a whaling port in New England. They were blissfully happy here, happier than either of them could have dreamed Now it seemed the house itself was dreaming of that happiness.

He paused and breathed in deeply, tasting brine at the back of his tongue.

Good, clean fresh air for her health.

The mist of his sighs drifted in short puffs as he trudged along the shingle, patchy with errant sprigs of grass, in the direction of the Neptune pub, the wind buffeting his fragile frame and kicking at the ends of his dark, long coat. Above him the sky hung Airfix blue, the sky over a cenotaph on poppy day, chill with brisk respect, and he was small under it.

Automatically he’d found himself taking the path he and Helen had taken—how many times?—arm in arm. Always arm in arm. His, muscular and taut, unerringly protective: hers light as a feather, a spirit in human form, even then. If he had grasped and held her, back then… stopped her from…
Stupid
.
Foolish thoughts
. But his thoughts at least kept her with him, if only in his heart. He was afraid to let those thoughts be blown away. As he placed one foot in front of the other he felt that stepping from that path would be some sort of blasphemy. That path was his path now, and his to tread alone.

His heart jumped as he noticed two huddled people coming towards him, chequered green and brown patterns, their scarves fluttering. A man and wife, arm in arm. He felt frightened again. He did not want to see their faces and fixed his eyes past them, on the middle distance, but in his peripheral vision could tell they had already seen him and saw them look at each other as they drew unavoidably closer. His chest tightened with dread.

“Mr Cushing?”

He had no alternative but to stop. He blinked like a lark, feigning surprise. Incomprehensibly, he found himself smiling.

“Sorry.” The man had a local accent. “Bob. Bob and Margaret? Nelson Road? I just wanted to say we were really sorry to hear about your wife.”

He took Bob’s hand in both of his and squeezed it warmly. He had no idea who Bob was, or Margaret for that matter.

“Bless you.”

The man and woman went on their way in the direction of West Beach and Seasalter and he walked on towards the Harbour, still smiling. Still wearing the mask.

He was an actor. He would act.

Act as if he were alive.

***

The sky had turned silver grey and the wind had begun whipping the surface of the water. After passing the hull of the
Favourite
, that familiar old oyster yawl beached like a whale between Island Wall and the sea, he sat in his usual spot near Keam’s Yard facing the wooden groynes that divided the beach, where he was wont to paint his watercolours of the coast. But there was no paint box or easel with him today. No such activity could inspire, activate or relax him and he wondered if that affliction, that restless hopelessness, might pass. If it meant forgetting Helen, even for an instant, he hoped it would not.

Usually the music of the boats, the flag-rustling and chiming of the rigging, was a comfort. Today it was not. How could it be? How could anything be? When there was nothing left in life but to endure it?

He took off his sunglasses and pulled a white cotton glove from his pocket onto the fingers of his right hand, momentarily resembling a magician, then lit a John Player unfiltered. It had become a habit during filming: he said, often, he didn’t want to play some ‘Nineteenth Century Professor of the Nicotine Stains’. As he smoked he looked down at his bare left hand which rested on his knee, lined with a route-map of pronounced blue veins. He traced them with his finger tips, not realising that he was enacting the gentle touch of another.

He closed his eyes, resting them from the sun and took into his smoker’s lungs the age-old aroma of the sea. Of all the senses, that of smell more than any other is the evoker of memories: and so it was. He remembered with uncanny clarity the last time he and Helen had watched children building ‘grotters’—sand or mud sculptures embellished imaginatively with myriads of oyster shells—only to see the waves come in and destroy them at the end of a warm and joyful Saint James’s Day. Clutching his arm, Helen had said, “Such a shame for the sea to wash away something so beautiful.” He’d laughed. His laughter was so distant now. “Don’t worry, my dear. They’ll make more beautiful ones next year.” “But that one was special,” she’d said, “I wanted that one to stay.”

The fresh salt air smarted in his eyes.

“I know who you are,” said a disembodied young voice.

Startled, he looked up and saw a boy about ten years old standing at an inquisitive distance, head tilted to one side with slats of cloud behind him and a book under his arm. He and Helen had no children of their own, or pets for that matter, but felt all the children and animals in the town were their friends. He remembered talking to the twins next door and asking what they wanted to be when they grew up—clergyman, sailor—and them innocently turning the question back at him, albeit that he was already in his fifties:
What do
you
want to be when you grow up?
Good question, for an actor. But this one, this boy, he didn’t recognise at all.

“You’re Doctor Van Helsing.”

The man’s pale blue eyes did not waver from the sea ahead of him.

“So I am.”

The boy threw a quick glance over his shoulder, then took a tentative step nearer. He wore short trousers, had one grey sock held up by elastic and the other at half-mast. Perhaps the other piece of elastic had snapped, or was lost.

“I… I saw what you did,” he stammered eagerly, tripping over his words, but they nevertheless came ten to the dozen, a fountain. “You… you were powerful. He escaped back to his castle and he… he leapt up the stairs four, five, six at a time with his big strides but you were right behind him. You were
determined
. And you couldn’t find him, then you
could
. And he was about to go down the trapdoor but he saw you and threw something at you and it just missed and made a really big clang, and then he was on top of you squeezing the life out of your throat and it hurt a really lot…” The boy hastily put his book between his knees and mimed strangulation with fingers round his own neck. “He had you down on the floor by the fireplace and you couldn’t breathe he was so strong and mighty and you went like this—” His eyes flickered and he slumped. “And he was coming right down at you with his pointed teeth and at the last minute you were awake—” The youngster straightened his back. “And you pushed him away and he stood there and you stood there too, rubbing your neck like this. And he was coming towards you and your eyes went like
this
—” He shot a glance to his left. “And you saw the red curtains and you jumped up and ran across the long, long table and tore them down and the sunlight poured in. And his back bent like this when it hit him and his shoe shrank and went all soggy and there was nothing in it. And he tried to crawl out of the sunlight and you wouldn’t let him. You grabbed two candle sticks from the table and held them like
this
—” He crossed his forearms, eyes blazing, jaw locked grimly. “You forced him back and his hand crumbled to ashes and became like a skeleton’s, and he covered his face with his hand like this, and all that turned grey and dusty too, and his clothes turned baggy because there was nothing inside them. And everything was saved and the sign of the cross faded on the girl’s hand. And after you, you—
vanquished
him, you looked out of the coloured window at the sky and put your woolly gloves back on. And the dust blew away on the air.”

Indeed.

The man remembered shooting that scene very well. The old ‘leap and a dash’ from the Errol Flynn days. Saying to dear old Terry Fisher: “Dear boy, I seem to be producing crucifixes from every conceivable pocket throughout this movie. Do you think we could possibly do something different here? I’m beginning to feel like a travelling salesman of crosses.” He’d come up with the idea himself of improvising using two candle sticks. He remembered the props master had produced a duo at first too ornate to work visually, but the second pair were perfect.

“That was you, wasn’t it?”

“I do believe it was,” Peter Cushing said.

He did not look at the boy and did not encourage him further in conversation, but the youngster ventured closer as if approaching an unknown animal which he assumed to be friendly but of which he was nevertheless wary, and sat on the wall beside him squarely facing the sea.

The man was now patting his jacket pockets, outside and in.

“What are you looking for?” The boy was curious. “A cross? Only you don’t need a cross. I’m not a vampire.”

“I’m very glad to hear it. I was looking for a photograph. I usually have some on me… I really don’t know where I’ve put them…”

“A what?”

“A photograph. A signed one.” No response. “Of yours truly.” Still no response, puzzlingly. “Isn’t that what you’d like?”

“No,” the boy said, sounding supremely affronted, as if he was dealing with an idiot.

“Oh…”

“I want to ask you something much more important than that.
Much
more important.”

“Oh. I see.”

Cushing looked around in a vain attempt to spot any parents from whom this child might have strayed, but there were no obvious candidates in evidence. If the boy
had
got lost, he thought, then it might be best for him to keep him quietly here at his side until they found him, rather than let him wander off again on his own. He really didn’t want this responsibility, and he certainly didn’t want company of any sort, but it seemed he didn’t have any choice in the matter.

“I said I’m not a vampire.” The boy interrupted his thoughts. “But I know somebody who is. And if they get their own way I’ll become one too, sooner or later. Because that’s what they do. That’s how they create other vampires.” The child turned his head sharply and looked the man straight in the eyes. “You said so.”

Quite right: he had done. It wasn’t hard to recall rewriting on set countless scenes of turgid exposition on vampire lore so that they didn’t sound quite so preposterous when the words came out of his mouth.

“Who is this person?” Cushing played along. “I probably need to take care of him, then.”

“He’s dangerous. But you don’t mind danger. You’re
heroic
.”

Cushing twitched an amused shrug. “I do my best.”

“Well it
has
to be your best,” the boy said with the most serious sense of conviction. “Or he’ll kill you. I mean that.”

“Then I’ll be as careful as possible. Absolutely.”

“Because if he finds out, he’ll hurt you, and he’ll hurt me.” The words were coming in a rapid flow again. “And he’ll hurt lots of other people as well, probably. Loads of them.” The boy drew up his legs, wrapped his arms round them tightly and tucked his knees under his chin. His eyes fixed on the horizon without blinking.

“Good gracious,” Cushing said. “You mustn’t take these type of pictures too much to heart, young man.”

“Pictures? What’s
pictures
got to do with it?” The abruptness was nothing short of accusatory. “I’m talking about
here
and
now
and you’re the vampire hunter and you need to
help
me.” The boy realised his harsh tone of voice might be unproductive, so quickly added, sheepishly: “Please.” Then, more bluntly, with an intense frown: “It’s your
job
.”