Chapter Thirty-seven
Eternal
The Grange was decorated like something out
of the 1920s. Light filled the room. It was surprising to Katarina that she
felt so happy. Hinton had not expected her acceptance. Together they worked.
Though she could only recall the length
of her mother’s hair, her large, pretty eyes and the warmth of her touch –
barely – Kate’s writing brought her back to Katarina. She could not, of course,
detail her transformation into the girl in the attic that day and Katarina
resolved that the more fantastical elements of her visit to The Hall might have
been a terrible dream or vision.
Katarina had each of the journals stored
in a locked drawer of her desk. They represented a year of Kate’s life on this
earth, and Katarina had read all of them. The words began in large, childish
letters, written in an unsophisticated way. Kate had skipped forward to the
good parts, and that was how she knew that Heath was her father, although she
never thought of him as that. Not yet. Not ever. They were how she had learnt
of the existence of hybrids and humans and vampires and bloodsucking and night
terrors. It was where she began to believe in the secrets of the impossible.
The day in the mist, the last time
Katarina had seen him, had been the day he started to disappear. Heath had
begun to move faster, some say at the speed of light. His powers were so
diverse now. He thought they might have brought him happiness but eternity
without the one he loved was…worthless. He waited for her.
It was not meant to be that way. He’d
been waiting for a long time. But a vampire turned by a hybrid is the longest
hibernation of all. Twenty years, he’d been told. And even then, she’d need
another eight to reach maturity (girl hybrids aged until twenty-eight when they
sometimes attained immortality). It was a risk. There was a chance.
For twenty years the teenage girl had
hidden and grown, showing herself only in the early dawn of first light. She
could not speak to him or any other person, let alone touch them. Recently, she
began to attain human form, as she had been the day she saw Katarina.
For the past month, Kate had come to him
in the night, older, not translucent anymore, still talkative, like a child.
Her skin had transformed from see through to pale. She no longer took the form
of a ghost.
Heath was preparing their first moments
together. Their first trip to Italy, where he intended to take her, was to
coincide with Kate’s twenty-first birthday as a hybrid. He’d been told it was
different for women. She’d take longer to emerge.
Tomorrow would be the day. Tomorrow
eternity began.
Kate had writhed in pain for months in her
attic space, hidden in corners, curled up in blankets. Heath had wandered the
heath in the evening to spare himself the pain of her suffering. No one else
could hear or see her and he couldn’t help her, could not even touch her. He
was sure she must regret her choice but when her memory returned, from the wild
dark spirit she had become, she reminded him constantly, how much she loved
him. It was the pain of seeing Katarina for the first time that rendered her
silent. Unable to speak to her grown child, or touch her, she’d disappeared for
a long time into the dark. No one could ever find her when they went looking,
not even Heath. Kate languished in a ghostly form, pined to hold her daughter,
longed to take human shape. It was no use.
Tomorrow, however, they would be free to
roam together. Heath would give up his human form for now and they would no
longer be seen by the rest of the world, at least until her transition was
complete. One day hybrids and vampires would be accepted by the human race but
that day had not yet arrived and it would not be safe for them to reveal
themselves. Those were the rules. Being hybrid, Heath could only turn one human
and that human, being part vampire, had had to wait two decades for
restoration. Kate’s form would be human, her body hybrid, with all the term
implied. Neither of them would ever look older than their mid-twenties. Heath
would be there to help her final transition, to encourage her, to love her.
He had been travelling, on a tour of his
European offices as she had languished in hibernation in The Hall. Over the
years she looked on in agony as the children grew. They were her greatest joy.
On occasion she visited Katarina at night, resting her face on the child’s
cheek, mindful she could never actually touch her. Eventually, she hoped they
would discover an elixir; that instead of vanishing together, (the price Heath
would pay for her complete transformation), they would be revealed simultaneously.
Heath had told no one he was winding up
the companies in America and selling most of his property. It took many weeks.
When he returned to London he only left the house to go riding on his favourite
horse and sometimes he went for long walks across Hampstead, through the park,
and back again. Kate was transforming. Her image appeared to him more than
briefly, for moments, and in daylight, not just dreams. He’d become more and
more silent to the point where even Greta, who had long ago realized that Heath
was not like other men, had taken to worrying constantly about him.
He would miss Greta and the children, who
were now grown but they would not miss him. He knew it.
He’d stopped pestering the boys about study
or work, stopped worrying about the future of his companies (they would cease
to exist soon enough and the cash signed over to Katarina, Linus and Hinton).
Heath had long ago stopped asking about any of his old rivals and
acquaintances, stopped being interested in the world around him.
That night, before the morning of change,
when Hinton, Linus and Katarina came to see him, he was congratulatory but
distant. Linus seemed more terse than usual and Katarina and Hinton were
blissful in each other’s company. The general malaise which Heath had embraced
now seemed to affect all areas of his life. He had long since ceased trying to
control the younger generation around him. He even congratulated Linus on his
new start at University, he told him he was ‘extremely proud of him, whatever
he chose to do but that “enjoying life” was just as important as a formal
education.’
It was all very out of character,
according to Greta, who left early after the party that night. Heath had relented
and made a brief appearance after Katarina left another invitation at The Hall.
Hinton insisted on kissing her goodbye on the cheek and hugged her. His body
was cool, his breath light. He assured her he was feeling perfectly alright.
The next morning, Greta noticed Heath’s
bed had not been slept in and he’d lost weight, so much weight that suits hung
off him, but he’d stopped wearing them, anyway. Greta had long since stopped
suggesting he take anti-depressants. Heath just laughed and told her he didn’t
need her help or anyone else’s.
Something strange happened in the silence
and emptiness of Hareton Hall when he returned. These days, it wasn’t just when
he slept. The attic was inhabited by a young girl, there was no question. Greta
invaded the attic one day and found packets of lollies, uneaten crisps, shoes,
socks, dresses, ancient dolls and ribbons. Then there were the strange, empty
vials of elixir which looked like…blood.
The first time Kate came to him in human
form, he’d been in the drawing room attending to the paperwork on his latest
company acquisition. He looked up to see some birds flying beyond where Hareton
Hall was situated. They looked so free, so wild.
It was three in the afternoon and a clear
day. No one was in the house, on the floor where the study was, yet all his
pens and papers had been sorted into neat piles when he walked back to his
desk.
It had been eighteen human years since he’d
seen her. He sat on his favourite chair and felt a reach on his shoulder, like
a whisper, the touch of her hands was so light, so transient.
‘Kate.’
‘Heath.’
‘I knew you’d come back to me,’ he said.
He held her hand for a moment and looked at
her perfect face until she was gone.
From that moment, he searched for her with some
hope of finding her transitioned and whole. He was reminded of the night he
begged her as she lay lifeless on her bed, ‘Come back to me, Kate. Haunt me,
drive me mad…’
‘Only if you turn me, change me…make me
yours forever.’ Somehow the timing was wrong. Somehow they’d met in the middle
and once again, they’d been kept apart, made to wait. Both of them like ghosts,
only one of them real.
That day, she must have heard him.
He tried to put the image of her from his
mind, at first, because it interfered with work, with his day. For many years,
she only visited at night in what he tried to believe were his dreams.
When
Hinton came to stay, permanently, after Harrison had drunk himself stupid and
wished to stay in the cottage, I insisted Hinton should stay in the main house
and Heath should hire more help (he did, without question or interest). Heath always seemed distracted and
secretive, for a reason, Greta wrote in the journals I read that night,
after my final visit to Hareton Hall. I
had as soft a spot for Hareton as I had for Heath, she wrote. Although I know I helped to raise a wolfish
man, you must understand how difficult life had been for him and how his
ambition had been fuelled by his loss and his early life and his…condition.
Both Heath and Kate, both young and headstrong, helped to create the adult
paths their lives had taken, but they deserved better. They deserved to be
together, it is just a shame they managed to hurt so many people in the
process. Although Annabelle remarried and found happiness at last - becoming
the manager of her own gallery…’ Greta added as an afterthought.
Heath wandered up the stairs that final
night, with a copy of Kate’s favourite novel, Jane Eyre, in his hands. He placed it by the bed next to her
photograph. He’d removed the photograph when Annabelle had lived with him here,
but it hadn’t helped him forget Kate. He’d read Jane Eyre when he was younger, at Kate’s insistence, unable to see
the parallels to their own isolated existence and the seeking of great love.
