Days in Whitby, 3.

Thursday:

The hotel we’re in was very grand, in its day. I can imagine Miss Marple having to solve a murder whist vacationing here. The glass and brass revolving door leads into a wide foyer, where the wallpapered columns have been painted with a marble effect. To the right is the lounge bar, where you can look out onto the sea, or share a table with a dozing pensioner. The toilets are right down the other end of the building, through the reception and the snooker room. A stair-lift for the three steps down told me all I need to know about the place. I haven’t moved far from there for the whole weekend. I tried to distract myself in the town at first, but the tourists suddenly multiplied. Sweaty bikers, pink and blue families, ramblers and disinfected youths all block up the pavements in a gridlock of window-shopping. In the summer, people must starve to death in the wait to get anywhere. Sebastian suggested that I, we or he go for a walk along the cliffs to Robin Hood’s Bay, and I compromised on going to Sandsend, along the beach, earlier this afternoon.

On Thursday night, I met the would-be-vampires once again. This time they asked about me. We settled down on the concrete of the jetty, in the shelter of its midway wall, so that they were just half-lit white faces in the dark. The blonde had taken a central position, and he asked:
“How do you come to be friends with David Challoner and Sebastian Frazer Brown?”
“I don’t know that they’re my friends. They know about magic, and I’m interested in magic, so I value our…” I had to avoid saying friendship here. I knew that they wouldn’t help if I was too close to them. “I value our relationship.”
“Which is what, if it isn’t friendship?” Asked the helmet haired one.
“With Sebastian, it’s a mutual interest. We both want to find Challoner. I suppose we’re becoming matey, but we’re not close. And with Challoner, I’m in the same position you all are. I believe he knows something that I want to know.”
“Which is what?” The blonde took over again, racing to the question.
“The whereabouts of a man I’d like to meet. Same as you.”
“And who is the man?”
“I’d rather not say. Same as you.” There was of course a chance that they had heard of you. For all I know you’re their master. But I doubt that. I doubt they know much at all, beyond what they’ve been sold. Someone, a woman I think, came walking along nearby, all bundled up against the night and the wind.
“Are you religious?” I was asked.
“Not especially.”
“Yes or no.”
“No. But I’m open to suggestion. You could say my opinions are in a state of indecision. Are you all religious?”
“Is that a joke?” The woman in the collar sounded angry.
“No. I mean obviously you don’t go to mass or anything, but isn’t the vampire,” I almost said myth, “all the rules and stuff, aren’t they all tied in with Christianity? So I thought that meant you’d believe in God.”
“How much do you know about vampires?” Asked the blonde, almost sarcastically. Sebastian had prepared me for this question.
“Just the mythology. The stuff they use to make stories.”
“Exactly. So what if there is a God? What does He have to do with us? I asked if you are religious. Do you hold to the Christian principles of morality? That woman there, coming back towards us, if I threw her into the sea, would you care?”
“Yes I’d care.”
“Why? Do you know her?”
“I don’t need to know her to not want her dead.”
“Why? What value can she possibly have for you? Does the thought of her death appal you genuinely, or simply out of habit? Is something wrong, just because?” The blonde waited for an answer that I couldn’t give. Not because I didn’t know what I thought, but because I couldn’t work out what they wanted me to say. It would have been unconvincing to abandon my moral base so easily, especially since they considered it such a personal achievement. I don’t know how they interpreted my silence: maybe as outrage, hopefully as doubt. The woman completed her walk unmolested.
“Why are you interested in magic?” Asked the woman in the collar, rescuing me.
“My father was a magician.” I saw no reason to lie about this. “He died lat Halloween, before he could tell me anything much about it. Did you know about magic, that it was real, before you met your master?”
“No.”
“Do you even think of it as magic?”
“No.”
“No.” Echoed the blonde. “It goes deeper than that. Who was your father? What did he do?” I suddenly realised there was a reason to lie – to protect the study.
“An amateur, making crackpot potions. That’s why it’s so refreshing to learn from others, like Challoner, and yourselves. It proves that it was real. He was onto something.”
“How did he die?” I don’t know why he wanted to know this. I guess he wanted to know what I thought about death.
“He drank a potion. It wouldn’t have killed him if it had remained magical. I don’t know what he was trying to do though. I’ve seen since how tempting these powers could be. What was it that you were seduced by, if not the power of magic? Immortality?”
“We’re talking about you tonight. Do you feel your father let you down?”
“Why would I?”
“He kept secrets from you.”
“It’s not that simple. I’m confused though, about what you were offered in all this. Because you say you were seduced out of your normal lives, but aren’t you still in the same bind of love, trust and death that you were before? He just wrapped it up more darkly, didn’t he?”
“You were warned yesterday not to talk about things when you don’t understand them.”
“Sorry. It just seems to me that you were pre-seduced.”

First the blonde, and then the others stood up. He said: “You cannot be trusted.” And then led the group away.

Since then Sebastian has been trying to re-establish the dialogue. He wants me to apologise to them. I’m thinking about going home, but Sebastian’s paying for the room, so it seems a wasted opportunity. The sea air is quite a thing, especially now that winter’s making an encore, and there’s a man I met in the pub last night who has a spine’s worth of local ghost stories.