Chapter Twenty-five
Scholarship
- Present Day
Slowly,
Katarina and Hinton became friends.
When
Katarina arrived at Hareton Hall at nine in the morning to help Hinton
revise his written applications for the Art prize, she felt a pool of
excitement in the pit of her stomach. She could hardly wait to see him again.
Hinton had confided in her that he thought his written skills were lacking and
Katarina had offered to help him present, “the best possible version of himself”,
as she put it. He had readily accepted and together they made a first draft.
The Hall, once the grandest of houses, had
creeping plants growing from its foundations now, as if it were slowly
crumbling from the inside. Over the past few months, the wiring needed fixing,
the swimming pool had grown thick with leaves, the tennis court was left
untended and the stables were nearly empty. The owner had become more and more
reclusive.
Hinton didn’t want to tell her why he’d
felt a desire stronger than any natural one to drink blood. It was a one in ten
thousand possibility, according to Heath’s specialist, but somehow his
condition matched that of his adopted parent.
A trace had been done and it seemed somehow Hinton and Heath shared the
same affliction.
Their lineage, a distant, improbable
vampire link, was not all they had in common. Hinton and Heath shared a desire
to feed, a fear of the sunlight and their own fading images in mirrors. Heath’s
was now an outline and soon there would be nothing. Today, Hinton’s image in the hallway mirror
had dulled considerably. Instead of a medallion, Hinton wore a signet ring that
Heath had given him when he was small, to protect him from the sun. Hinton
resolved not to focus on the negatives of his condition.
The winner of the scholarship was due to
receive an apartment and a small stipend abroad. Prague would be darker and
rainier than many places and Hinton quite liked the idea of that kind of
weather, for obvious reasons. He wanted to get away. Still, only one person
from the whole college would be chosen on the strength of their exhibit.
Katarina had insisted on taking him in her
new car for lunch in Hampstead High Street. Her father had bought the car for
her as a bribe for choosing to study in London instead of travelling far from
home. Previously, the thought of Katarina leaving him was something her loving
father had found nearly impossible to bear. Katarina, having recently turned
eighteen, was experiencing a freedom she had longed for after passing her
driving test. The girl was yet to tell her father that she had become friendly
with Heath, Linus and Hinton. That was
an “off limits” conversation.
It was a beautiful day, rare and summery,
like the ones her father had told her about when she was first born. In those
days, when she was a child, she vaguely remembered her young mother taking her
to Hampstead Heath for picnics. Her studious father would hold her hand, walk
her across the road and teach her to ride. When she was old enough she rode
park trails on her pony and later, her horse. By the time she was a teenager,
she’d become an expert, riding properly in various events on Hero’s Daughter.
When Katarina asked about her mother’s
family, all her father told her was that he’d never been fond of Heath as a
child. He grew up with nannies and in boarding schools as men of his class and
in his generation did but repeatedly told Katarina he loved her - something his
own family had never said to him. Katarina knew this was true and that he meant
well. He had tried not to burden her with this now adult concept of his quiet, contained,
isolated youth but one day he told his daughter something that surprised her.
‘I never saw my parents show any affection
to one another,’ he told Katarina when they were out riding together.
‘Something of an overshare, Papa,’ she’d
replied.
Katarina realised how different her
upbringing had been from her father’s.
How strange and quiet the heath had
become in winter, her father thought, when he first bundled this little girl up
and took her for long walks to Kenwood House. As she grew older, and had her
own nanny, the family would often go for picnics in the grounds of the heath. Though
the gardens of their own house were magnificent, Hunt wanted Katarina to have
the normal childhood that had eluded him, or as normal as it was possible for
her to have, so he took her exploring.
Being in his daughter’s company pleased
Edmund Hunt endlessly. He remembered so many dinners with his own father,
separated by an expanse of dining room table.
He was never allowed to chatter during meals. He determined to raise
Katarina differently. Together they played a game called… What if? From the time Katarina could talk she was encouraged to
ask questions: ‘What if the world was
coloured pink? What if the grass was blue? What if Mummy hadn’t left?’ This
question ended the game. There were some questions Hunt wouldn’t answer.
As she grew older he worried for her and
for himself. His daughter was sweet-natured and generous. She had gifted him
further understanding of the world beyond his front door. Katarina made Hunt
see life for what it was, rather than in isolation and in relation to his needs
and those of his family. He knew he loved her so much he would never be able to
say “no” to her and dreaded the day she would ask him for something he could
not or did not wish to give her.
Like the truth.
The morning Katarina and Hinton decided to
drive over to Hampstead High Street, the place, busy with post-Christmas
bargain hunters, was busy. Together they sat in the French patisserie and
ordered coffee, sandwiches and sweet cakes. Hinton barely ate in her presence
and when he did, he picked the chicken off his plate and chewed that
first.
‘Do you know why our families don’t speak?’
Katarina asked as she stirred sugar into her latte.
‘Age old feud,’ Hinton said. ‘I think Linus
knows the whole story. I only know my version of it. I’m sure your father would
have a different account of what happened.’
‘He wouldn’t be happy if he knew we were
all in contact, that’s for sure. But I’m so glad you and Linus and I are
friends.’
‘Is that what we are?’ Hinton looked at
her quickly, wondering for a moment if she would say something more.
In response, Katarina looked into his
eyes as Hinton took her hand. His fingers were pleasantly cool.
‘I want to…thank you for helping me so
much.’
Hinton slipped a tiny packet in the
saucer of her tea cup. The envelope contained a delicate, gold bracelet with
the initials KH carved on the inside. It must have cost Hinton at least a month
of the wages he’d earned, working at the pub.
Katarina smiled as Hinton helped her to
fasten the clasp around her wrist.
‘Thank you,’ she said, finishing her
toast. Then she did something that surprised him. Katarina leant over and
kissed him with her honey lips.
Hinton’s face flushed red. He wasn’t
really sure what to say next. He’d dated girls, lots of them, but he’d never felt
for anyone the way he felt for Katarina. He shyly took her hand and kissed
it.
They had been reading together every
day. Heath still got the odd word the wrong way round, but had improved
considerably. He was sure the extra study he did with the tutor he’d hired (encouraged
by Katarina) had gone a long way to making words much easier for him to read.
His world had opened up and he was less afraid of what the future held when she
was near. He didn’t want to let go of her fingers.
‘Over these months …you helped me to have
some confidence, not just in reading, but in…myself.’
Katarina was speechless. She had looked
forward to every moment she spent with Hinton walking through Hampstead and working
together in the studio in Soho. He dreaded what he had to tell her so instead
he passed her some documents.
‘You need to read something,’ Hinton said,
‘before you decide if you want to…be my girlfriend…’
Katarina smiled, it was the first time he’d
used that word. Then she frowned, what possible barrier stood in the way of
this, her first real romance?
Hinton passed her his medical records.
‘You need to be aware,’ he said, ‘that I’m
not…normal.’
Katarina looked at him quizzically, unsure
of the correct response. Hinton got up and left the coffee shop as Katarina
opened the cover of the first folder marked: Type A Requirements.
Later that day, Hinton was in the college
studio, quietly painting. He had a small supply of Magenta that he kept in the
student common room kitchen in a flask. He quietly sucked on lunch through a
straw. Since he’d turned twenty-one his desire for human blood had been
overwhelming but this daily treat of Magenta kept it at bay. Vampiricism was
another reason he and his uncle both liked and loathed each other.
Heath had been the first to identify him
as a fellow bloodsucker. Hinton had been so full of self-loathing he was almost
glad Harrison and Franny had never lived to see him develop from hybrid to
vampire. Harrison had drunk himself to death in his early thirties and his
wife, Frances, had been killed in a nightclub in Paris at the age of twenty-six.
That’s how Hinton wound up with Heath. It was discovered Heath and Frances
(remarkably) shared a supernatural gene. Although Heath had not been
biologically related to Harrison or Kate, he was a very distant cousin (two
hundred years removed) to Frances and Hinton.
Hinton didn’t share Heath’s passion for
chicken but he gnawed on a cooked chop that had been specially marinated, pan
fried and wrapped in foil. He’d left Katarina with the open folder on her desk
and didn’t want to think about what her reaction might be.
Hinton painted freely. He was sure with
brush strokes in a way that he had never been with words. He disliked any form
of authority but was aware of his need to improve his basic reading skills. He
was embarrassed to be this age, to be this bright (he had no trouble
comprehending the world and had a photographic memory for numbers and people’s
names…), yet to still be such a terrible reader was confronting. He’d long ago
accepted his daily need for blood but he was ashamed of his lack of education.
He’d stuttered as a child and somehow he’d overcome this affliction in his
teens. If Katarina believed in him, he felt sure, with her help, he could
overcome his wicked desires.
He liked the solitude of the studio, deep
in the quiet hub of the empty Art College.
Nobody was here late in the afternoon and
there was not a soul to suggest changes to what he was creating. He thought of
Katarina and checked the messages on his mobile; nothing. He wondered what she was thinking but didn’t
want to press her until she had fully digested what the words in that folder
meant.
They’d been working on abstract
expressionism in class, but for the first time in weeks Hinton’s brush seemed
to have a mind of its own as he removed the drying artwork from his desk and
set to work on a blank canvas attached to a wooden easel.
He sketched the outline from a photograph
taken on his mobile but then he relied on the memory of her perfect face. As if
writing a first draft, he sketched with abandon, adding the base with great
ease and little emphasis on detail. But then, as the hours wore on, and
afternoon became evening, he built the intricate shades of colour that became
skin on his subject’s neck. The textures made him uneasy. Still, with no answer
from the girl, his first layer of the image was becoming more complex, like a
photograph of Katarina’s face. Hinton leaned in and painted two perfect red
dots on the paper frail skin above her collar bone. Then he bowed his head in
his hands and sighed.
That
afternoon, Katarina re-read Hinton’s file.
It was less shocking than she’d suspected.
The word ‘blood’ stood out in all its
satin, red stained essence.
The description of Hinton’s “type” was
unusual but not conclusive. For years now, there had been talk in the press
about a rogue species; human-vampires. Born with a weak strain of vampiricism,
they developed fully over a period of time and into adulthood. It was different
for males and females. The females could linger for up to twenty years in
hibernation and it was impossible to tell the difference between hybrids and
human beings. Katarina had not taken as much notice as she should have but she
remembered these details from a recent article on the web.
She wanted to discover as many facts as
she could; she wanted to find out what this strain meant for them and how she
could help. Regardless of words on paper, Hinton was still Hinton. Katarina
realized this as she read the doctor’s dramatic introduction: he may not sleep at night, he may not wish
to eat…it may be possible he lives far beyond the years of normal humans… The
words “immortality”, “bloodsucker”, “vanished”, “feeding”, “type A”, “hunger”, “forever”,
jumped out at her on the page. Katarina resolved to do some more research that
evening.
Upon waking, after Katarina had had a few
hours’ sleep and the enormity of Hinton’s condition had set in, Hinton would be
greeted with the message - it’s okay. I
love you and that doesn’t change. I want to help in any way possible. Meet you
tomorrow afternoon @ Hareton Hall.
Katarina was determined to finish her Art
folio the next day (of a series of photographs of Hareton Hall) using different
levels of light. The girl also intended to start reading the files and finish
the journals. She knew there was a secret that went beyond Hinton. The hush ran
through the family. There had been whispers of a human-hybrid species for years
in the media, but no one she ever knew had met an actual vampire; whole or
hybrid. They kept to themselves, or maybe they just hid in the shadows.
Hinton, in retrospect, had displayed all
the symptoms she’d researched on the web upon waking. His specialist had
scrawled in the files… ‘The young man has cravings for protein, then citrus,
then…animal blood…which may develop upon adulthood as a craving for humans…’
Katarina looked away. Further details
were in the files that she forced herself to read.
The
boy displayed a nocturnal instinct as a child. He’d tried to bite his own
mother (at birth) and she had declared him ‘impossible’ to raise.
It was true. Hinton had gravitated towards
Heath as a child. His sister, Frances, had stayed at the Hall briefly until she
fled to Paris. Harrison had been discovered trying to beat Hinton with a stick,
before he drank himself into oblivion. That part was true; it was like history
repeating itself.
Katarina was surprised as she read the
social worker’s reports sitting in the car. Her desire to help and protect
Hinton grew stronger with every sentence.
