“To be truthful I hate the term ‘horror film’. Car crashes and the concentration camps and what’s happening in Northern Ireland, that’s horror. I think of the fantasies I star in as fairy tales or medieval mystery plays for a new generation. If you take the ‘O’ from Good and add a ‘D’ to Evil, you get God and the Devil—two of the greatest antagonists in the whole of history. And Van Helsing is important because he shows us Good triumphs. After all, Shakespeare used horrific images in Titus Andronicus, and mankind’s belief in the supernatural in Macbeth, and nobody belittles the fellow for that. I think the best so-called ‘horror’ shows us our worst fears in symbolic form and tries to tell us in dramatic terms how we can overcome them.”
“Yeah, well.” Her face, turning back to the ironing board, betrayed an ill-concealed sneer. “I didn’t pass enough exams to understand all that. We didn’t have books in our house. My dad was too busy working.”
He sighed. “Mrs Drinkwater, I’m quite sure you don’t want this discussion and neither do I. Please just put my mind at rest, that’s all I ask. Truly. Just talk to Carl. Listen to him.”
“You’ve listened to him. Do you believe him?”
“My dear, I’m just an actor. It’s his mother he should talk to.”
“Or a psychiatrist.”
“If that’s what you genuinely think.”
“It’s no business of yours what I think.”
“You’re quite right, of course.” He stood up, putting his bicycle clips in his pocket. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have come, but please believe me when I say I did so only out of concern for Carl. I apologise profusely if I’ve upset you. That wasn’t my intention at all.”
“You haven’t upset me,” she said.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you. I’ll see myself out.” He thought the conversation was over but he’d barely reached the door to the hall before she said behind his back:
“Why don’t you make nice, decent films, eh?”
He turned back with sadness, both at the slight and his own ineffectiveness. He knew she felt accused and belittled by his very presence, undermined by his unwanted interference and presumptions and posh voice and good manners and wanted to attack it, all of it.
“Don’t you think I’ve got enough problems with him, without this…? Without him talking to strangers…? Talking rubbish…?”
His blue eyes shone at her.
“I can’t believe he’s saying what he’s saying, honest to God. He’s got no business to.” Her cheeks were flushed now, voice quavering on the edge of losing control. “I swear, Les is good as gold with that kid. Better than his real dad, by a mile. You want to know who really hurt him? If you want to know the truth, his father did. He did that by buggering off. And there isn’t a day goes by I don’t see that in my son’s eyes, so don’t come here accusing me or anybody else when the real person isn’t here anymore.” He could see she fought away demons, the worst kind—and tears.
Instinctively, he walked over and took her hands in his. “I beseech you, my dear. Talk to your son.”
Appalled, she backed away from him.
“I don’t need to talk to my son.”
She reached the wall and couldn’t back away any further. His face was close to hers and he looked deeply into her eyes, his own vision misty, almost unable to get out the words he must.
“My dear, dear girl. I’ve lost someone I loved. Please don’t do the same.”
She snatched away her hands as if the touch of him was infectious.
“How fucking dare you!” She shoved him in the chest. Then shoved him again. “Get out of here.” He staggered backwards, feeling it inside the drum of his old, brittle ribs. “Get out of my fucking house! Get out!”
Gasping for breath and words, he stumbled to the front door as she berated him with her screams and obscenities and later remembered nothing of getting to his bicycle or getting from Rayham Road to Seaway Cottages except that he had to stop a number of times to wipe the tears from his eyes and by the time he got indoors a thin film of ice had formed covering his cheeks.
A film played in the darkened theatre of his brain. A Hammer film, but not their usual fare. Not set in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century, but in Canada in the present, even though it was filmed at Bray. The opening shot of darling Felix Aylmer, who’d played his father in The Mummy, ogling two young girls through binoculars. A vile creation. A ‘dirty old man’ in common parlance—hideously inadequate euphemism that it was.
“He made us play that silly game…”
Square-jawed Patrick Allen as the father. “If he touched her, I’ll kill the swine!” Gwen Watford, an actress who always appeared to be on the verge of tears. “You expect me to be objective when a man has corrupted my daughter?”
Corrupted. Precisely.
He knew many films where the house outside town harboured inconceivable evil, and had starred in quite a few where the villagers marched up to it demanding justice or revenge, but in this picture fear has the upper hand. The family is powerful. The hero, weak. The community knows how old Mr Olderberry “can’t keep his eyes off children”, but the townsfolk choose to keep their heads firmly in the sand. Even the police think it must be the girls’ own fault.
The child’s own fault.
The very concept was odious. As odious as the sight of gummy old Felix pursuing the girls through the woods, staggering like Boris Karloff after the one in pigtails, stepping over the overturned bicycle. Wordlessly pulling the rowing boat containing the two children back to shore by its slimy rope…
A girl sat up in the tree and it didn’t seem at all peculiar but it worried him. It was an oak tree, old and sturdy, with deeply wrinkled bark. The little girl didn’t seem distressed but she did seem determined, a strong-willed little soul. She wore a frilled collar like a Victorian child and he thought she was clutching a toy or teddy bear but couldn’t make it out clearly through the leaves and branches. “Come down,” he called to her. He looked around but there was no-one else about. Only him. So it was down to him to do something. “Come down.” But the girl wouldn’t come down. She just looked down at him, frowning seriously. “Come down. Please,” he begged. But still she didn’t move. A man came along. A man he didn’t know. The man said to him: “What are you doing?” He couldn’t answer. He got confused, he didn’t know why, but before he could answer anyway, the man stepped closer and went on: “You know exactly what you’re doing don’t you? Don’t you?” Rage and aggression built up in the man’s face and his tightly pursed mouth extended to became a vicious-looking yellow beak. And this beak and another beak were prodding and poking at a boy’s short trousers, snatching and tearing out gouts of underwear. The underwear was made of paper. Newspaper. And somehow he was upset that what was written was important, the words were important.
He woke to the sound of seagulls snagging and swooping above his roof.
At the best of times, he despaired at their racket. And these were not the best of times. Now the noise was no less than purgatory. As a child in Surrey he’d thought they were angels, but now he held no illusions about the species. The creatures were the very icon of an English seaside town, but they were relentless and without mercy. He’d once seen a large speckled gull going for a toddler’s bag of chips, almost taking off its fingers, leaving it bawling and terrified in its mother’s embrace. They were motivated by only selfish need and gratification, thought only of their own bellies and their own desires. It seemed almost symbolic that we never ate sea birds, knowing almost instinctively that their insides would be disgusting, inedible, rank, rancid, foul. It seemed to Cushing that their screeching was both a bombastic call to arms and a cry of pain.