The Radleys (28 page)

I
f blood is the answer, you are asking the wrong question.

The Abstainer’s Handbook
(second edition), p. 101

A Conversation about Leeches

Wil remembers the first night Peter brought Helen back to their flat in Clapham. He knew the dril before she had arrived. He had to be on his best behavior and not give anything away.

No Dracula jokes, no lustful glances at her neck, no unnecessary sunlight or garlic revelations.

Peter had told him that Helen, a fel ow medical student, was someone he had serious feelings for and he had no intention of lowering the relationship to the level of just another meaningless bite-and-suck session. Not just yet, at any rate. Peter had even mentioned the
c
word, and said that he was thinking of tel ing her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and hopeful y swaying her around to the idea of voluntary conversion.

“You
are
joking,” Wil had said.

“No, I’m not. I think I’m in love with her.”

“But
conversion
? That’s a step beyond, Petey.”

“I know, but I real y think she’s the one.”

“
Zut alors
. You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

Wil whistled, long and slow. “Wel , it’s your funeral.”

To Wil , conversion had always been a hypothetical concept. It was something he knew was physical y possible, and also something which actual y happened quite a lot, if the rapidly expanding adult vampire population was anything to go by, but why on earth anyone would actual y want to do it remained a mystery to him.

After al , conversion had significant consequences for the convertor as wel as the convertee.

Making yourself bleed in such quantities so quickly after tasting the blood of someone else weakened you emotional y and gave you almost as serious an attachment to them as they had to you.

“Why the hel would I want to do that to myself?” Wil had said, anytime he was asked if he would consider it.

But stil , Peter’s business was Peter’s business, and Wil was too much of a libertine to get in the way or pass judgment. Yet he was intrigued to see who could have managed to capture the heart of a ful -blooded Radley.

He remembers precisely how he’d felt the moment he saw her.

Absolutely nothing.

At first.

She was just another attractive unblood in a world ful of attractive unbloods. Yet as that first evening wore on, he realized how incredibly sexy she was—her eyes, the tender slope of her nose, the clinical way she talked about human anatomy and various surgical procedures (“and then you have to cut through the right pulmonary artery . . .”) She loved art. She went to life drawing classes on Tuesday evenings and had eclectic tastes.

She loved Matisse and Edward Hopper and old Renaissance stuff too. She loved Veronese and seemed to have no idea he had been one of the most debauched Venetian vampires ever to leave bloodstains on a gondola.

And they had a conversation about leeches. She knew a lot about leeches.

“Leeches are very underrated,” said Helen.

“I agree.”

“A leech is an amazing thing.”

“I’m sure.”

“Technical y, they’re annelids. Like earthworms. But they are significantly more advanced.

Leeches have thirty-four brains, can predict thunderstorms, and have been used in medicine since the Aztecs.”

“You real y know your leeches.”

“I researched them for my degree. About how they can be used to ease osteoarthritis. It’s stil a bit of a controversial theory.”

“There’s another cure for bad bones, you know,” Wil had said, before Peter had coughed him into line.

She won the games of blackjack they played that night, as she knew when to hold back. Plus she didn’t have the distraction of her scent, which Wil and Peter certainly did. It was so multiflavored, there were so many notes to her blood, that they could have sat there for hours mutely trying to work them al out.

Helen’s later version of events would be that Wil only wanted her because she was with his brother. But Wil remembers trying desperately
not
to appreciate her. He never wanted to feel anything for a woman except the simple straightforward desire to satisfy his thirst. “To me, emotions were just tumbling rapids which led headlong toward the waterfal of conversion” is how he put it in his journal. “I wanted to stay in the paddling pools of easy pleasure.”

He wanted Peter to dump Helen, and for both of them to forget her. But Peter and Helen were completely besotted with each other. They were so
happy
, and Wil couldn’t stand to be anywhere near that happiness. Not without planning to destroy it.

“I love her,” Peter told his brother. “I’m going to convert her and tel her who I am.”

“No. Don’t.”

“What? I thought you said it was my funeral. I thought you said it was up to me.”

“I’m tel ing you, hold off a while. You know, wait a couple of years. You could live til you’re two hundred. Think about it. A couple of years is just one percent of your life.”

“But—”

“And if you stil like her after that time,
then
tel her about who you are and what you get up to when she’s asleep. And if she stil likes you, marry her and convert her on your wedding night.”

“I don’t know if I can resist biting her for that long.”

“If you
love
her, you’l be able to wait.”

When Wil had said al this, he doubted Peter would have the patience. He’d get bored of Helen and get back on the party train with Wil , as surely night after night of bloodless copulation would eventual y get to him. He’d either lash out and bite her midact, or he’d leave her altogether.

But no.

Two years of cinema trips and walks in the park and Peter was stil holding strong. In the meantime, Wil was nominal y lecturing in London but in reality was hardly ever there. He was always off traveling the world. One night he asked Peter to meet him in Prague, to visit Nekropolis, one of the vampire clubs that had cropped up around St. Wenceslas Square fol owing the Velvet Revolution.

“Not waning yet?” he’d asked him, above the heavy industrial pulse of the techno music.

“No,” said Peter, “I’ve never felt happier. Truly. She’s funny. She makes me laugh. The other night, when I got home she—”

“Wel , don’t rush anything.”

On the rare occasions Wil saw Helen during this period he experienced a strange fluttering in his stomach, which he tried to put down to blood deprivation or coming out before it was dark.

He’d always feel the need to go blood-cruising after seeing her. He’d often just whiz up to Manchester, where the vampire scene was real y starting to blossom, and gorge on any wil ing—

or unwil ing—neck that took his fancy.

And then it happened.

On March 13, 1992, Peter revealed to his brother that he had told Helen everything.

“Everything?”

Peter nodded, and sipped some more blood, straight out of the jar. “She knows who I am and she accepts it.”

“What are you tel ing me?”

“Wel . . . we’re getting married. In June. We’ve set a date at the registry office. She wants me to convert her on our honeymoon.”

Wil felt, and subsequently fought off, a strong desire to stab a fork into his brother’s eye. “Oh,”

he said. “I’m real y pleased for you.”

“I knew you would be. After al , I’m fol owing your advice.”

“So you are. That is very true, Pete. You held off for a long while, then told her.”

Wil was free-fal ing.

He was smiling without meaning it, something he had never done at any previous point in his life. Around the kitchen were traces of her—a cookbook on the counter, a nude sketch framed on the wal , a dirty wine glass from the night before—and he needed to get out of there. So he did, brushing past one of her coats in the hal way on his way out.

Only the next day, when she came to him, in a dream lit and cast by Veronese, did he realize the truth. She was sitting there, at some kind of sixteenth-century Venetian wedding banquet with a monkey-strewn dwarf-slave pouring wine into the golden goblet she was holding. Whereas al the other majestical y attractive women were decorated in magenta silks and luscious fairy-tale gowns, Helen was precisely as she had been the first time he’d seen her. A plain acrylic turtleneck, no evident makeup, hair styled by nature and comb alone. And yet no one in this moving dream fresco even half compared to her or interested Wil in the slightest.

As he floated closer and closer toward that infinitely wide banquet table, he noticed the man next to her. He had a laurel wreath on his head and was dressed like a Renaissance prince. He was whispering unheard words into Helen’s ear and making her smile. Only when this man stood up did he realize it was Peter.

Peter clinked his goblet with a golden fork. Everyone, even the monkeys, stopped to listen.

“Thank you, thank you, lords, dukes, pygmies, dwarves, one-armed jugglers, lesser primates, ladies, and gentlemen. I’m so glad you could al be here on our special day. My life is complete now Helen is my bride . . .” Helen observed the flamingo meat on her plate and smiled with modest grace. “. . . and al that is left for me to do is to consummate our special bond.” And Wil watched in horror as Peter pul ed down the neck on her sweater and bit into her. His horror intensified at the sight of Helen gasping in pleasure.

Wil had never liked weddings, but none had ever affected him quite like this. As he watched Peter pour Helen’s goblet of wine down her neck, Wil realized it wasn’t wine at al but Peter’s blood. He flew forward, screaming
“No!”
as a hundred monkeys jumped up and smothered him in blackness. When he woke up in a cold sweat, he realized the impossible had happened.

Wil Radley had fal en into something that looked every wild and hideous bit like love.

Two weeks before the real wedding happened, he was back in London sleeping in a camper van he had stolen from a white Rastafarian in Camden. He had gone around one night, knowing his brother was out, and couldn’t stop himself.

“Helen, I love you.”

“Helen, I love you.”

She turned away from the TV news—more fighting in Yugoslavia—to look at him, leaning back on her secondhand rocking chair. “Sorry?”

He held her gaze, without a smile, and focused intently on her blood.

“I know I shouldn’t say this, with Peter being my brother and al that, but I adore you.”

“Oh Wil , don’t be so ridiculous.”

“Ridicule me if you want, but I mean every single word. I can’t look at you, I can’t hear your voice or catch your scent without wanting to take you in my arms and fly you far, far away.”

“Wil , please,” she said. She clearly wasn’t interested in him in that way. “Peter’s your brother.”

He didn’t nod or shake his head. He contemplated being a better person, but fought against it.

Love
, he believed,
is made weak by morality
. He loved her at ful , selfish strength and wanted her by any means—and he always had means. So, though he might have preferred it another way, he couldn’t stop himself. The blood minding began. He kept as stil as he could while making sure they stayed locked inside the same stare.

Outside, the rise and fal of a police siren was sounding its way up Clapham High Street.

“You’re right, Helen. Most deep truths are inappropriate. But to be brutal y honest, without truth what is the fucking point? Could you please tel me?”

“Peter wil be home any minute. You’ve got to stop talking like this.”

“I would, Helen. Of course I would. If I honestly didn’t know that you felt precisely the same way.”

She put her hand over her eyes, breaking the stare.

“Wil —”

“You know you want me to convert you, Helen.”

“How could you do this? To your brother?”

“I find it quite easy.”

She stood up and walked out of the room. He fol owed her into the hal way, saw al the coats like a row of backs turned away from them. He didn’t want to do it, but he did it anyway. He blood-minded her with everything he had.

“You know you don’t want it to be Peter. You know it. Come on, don’t be weak, Helen. You only have one life. You might as wel use it to taste what you want to taste. If you wait two more weeks it wil al be over and you wil be his and there wil be no chance for us, Helen. You’l have kil ed it.

And I’l hate you almost as much as you’l hate yourself.”

She was confused. She didn’t have a clue he wasn’t even talking to her but to her blood. “But I love Peter—”

“Tomorrow he’s working a night shift. We could fly to Paris together. We could have the time of our lives. You and me, soaring high above the Eiffel Tower.”

“Wil , please—”

She was at the door. He only had one more chance. He closed his eyes and caught a whole universe in the scent of her blood. He thought of that wise old French blood craver, Jean Genet, and quoted him: “ ‘Anyone who hasn’t experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at al .’ ” And then he told her a hundred things designed to annihilate her true self.

He held out his hand. And in a fateful moment of weakness, she took it. “Come on,” he said, feeling that deep joy that always came to him when kil ing another person’s happiness. “Let’s go outside.”

A Proposition

Nearly two decades after that conversation with Wil, Helen, her head and neck tingling with nervous energy, is bringing a policewoman into her living room.

“Would you like a coffee, Alison?” she says. “It was Alison, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was. But no, I don’t require any coffee.”

Alison’s voice is cool and official, her back regal as she sits primly on the sofa. Helen is unsure how to treat this unflappably cool woman.