I have seen him again

Rupert, that is. He came to the door, this time bringing leaflets for one of our local Independent candidates, who supports the abolition of income tax and the imposition of VAT at 50%. He flashed a smile at me - oh, those white, pointed teeth - and blew a kiss that was full of allure but also of menace. I'm up to no good, it said. But when was Rupert ever up to any good? The leaflet came in through the letter-box with a little rattle. I looked up and Rupert was gone.
The VAT - well, that wasn't hard to comprehend. In Sanguinaria we had Vampire Appreciation Tax, levied on the entire non-vampire population, and collected only in gold pieces, which we then exchanged for valuable items, like our clothes, the decor of the castle, etc.

It is not generally known, but the doors between the worlds open if gold is paid to Hundinus, the nine-headed bull terrier who guards them. He crunches the gold up in his diamond-hard teeth - you have to pay nine gold pieces, of course, one for each set of teeth. This is, of course, how Rupert got here. It's also how our predecessors managed to get Lutyens across to design the castle for them, replacing the previous, eighteenth-century and thus far less authentically medieval version.
I think that in some way the huge lettering on Mrs Jezebel Gratuita's leaflet may have cast some shadow across the gulf between our worlds, and maybe a spectral version of it landed on Rupert's evening table, when he was drinking breakfast blood from a skull.

But there's more than that going on. Today I met Rudolf, he was skulking behind the quince in my back garden, looking on with horror as I piled soil over the potato plants. 'What are you doing, my vampire?' he demanded. 'Behaving like a peasant?'
I trembled. Would I lose his love? I had no idea what to say - but he seized me in his arms and pulled me close to him. I trembled again. Would his embrace, in this world, make me into a vampire? I was not at all sure if I wanted this to happen. But Rudolf's teeth did not emerge to bite into my throat. He had human teeth, as I discovered when we kissed.
We stared at each other. He was as staggered as I was to find me bereft of the dagger-sharp canines in which we rejoiced on the other side of that Veil that hangs between the worlds. Then we confessed All to each other. It appears that he too was whisked into Sanguinaria from a normal life here, where he works in the Environment Agency.

'We are in great danger,' he said, taking my hand in his and pressing hot kisses on the palm; sending quivers of desire all through me, but -
'Rudolf!' I cried. 'In this world, my darling, I am a married woman.'
'Oh!' he exclaimed. I saw despair on his face. 'My love, fly with me - back to Sanguinaria.' We gazed at each other again, racked by exquisite temptation. It was one of those supreme moments impossible to do full justice to in prose. Imagine a rocking sea of scarlet, over which birds swoop to brush one's skin with the edges of their wings, singing the sweetest, most treacherous songs that have ever been heard in any of the worlds that live side by side in the quantum continuum of existence -

'No,' he said, biting his lip with a blunt canine. 'We must not be tempted. I am a man of honour, after all. Whatever deep dishonour may stir in the uttermost abyss of my being, and it does, you may believe me. My love, I have come to find you because Rupert has some letters I wrote you in Sanguinaria. He wants to show them to Bloodlouse.'
'Bloodlouse!' I cried, shuddering. 'But I got rid of him. He's gone.'
'He's reconstituted himself,' Rudolf said, miserably contemplating a potato plant I had not yet buried.
I shuddered once more. Here I was, in this world, in the middle of a quadrangle of tangled love and lust - my darling husband here, only recently recovered from his heart attack, Bloodlouse in Sanguinaria - and who is to say that Rupert may not reveal my dwelling in this life to him - Rudolf, and Rupert. There is only one thing for it.

I must acquire nine pieces of gold, find Hundinus, and unlock the gates between the worlds. Rudolf must come, too. We must play this thing out where it started - and Rudolf and I must get back in time to vote on Thursday.

Rudolf shinned over the garden fence, tearing his jeans in the process, but luckily not breaking the fence - and disappeared before my dog could emerge to bark at him. Where to get the gold, though, at such short notice, and without breaking into my savings? I am racked with anxiety.

Rupert in UK

I can feel his breath on my neck - what does he want? Maybe he's only come over to help with the Tory Party campaign, their policies are possibly closest to those we held dear in Sanguinaria. We too believed in the people taking over the institutions and running them for themselves - schools, hospitals, and so on were entirely run and funded by the local community - why should we have encouraged them to become dependent on handouts? We also believed in regular referenda (please note that vampires are literate beings and know how to give plurals of latin neuter nouns. Rupert, on the other hand, is far from neuter, though vampires do it differently from ordinary men). Of course referenda had to be screened by us - any which were aimed at ridding the world of vampires were at once put on the fire, and the authors received a visit that night, which well convinced them of the stupidity of such referenda. Do you know, I'm getting a little tired of that word? But I do believe that Cameron's views would be close to our own, and as for vampires, who needs them in this world when we have bankers?
This is perhaps why Rupert has arrived here, to take over a consultancy post in a bank? It will do them no good. Rupert never did no-one any good. Not even me. But the fever of intoxication his nearness induces in me - oh, what is this lure of the no-gooder? The wild gleam in the eye, the intense, heavy breathing, the look that tells a poor female so clearly that he wants to use her and drop her, and the way she then wants, oh, so passionately, to be used, the bliss of being used and knowing it's not forever.
But then, who would want to stay with a no-good like Rupert forever?
None of this explains why he's pursued me here. I like the banking theory best, though. Time will tell - or maybe - who knows, he's reading this blog? I'm sure he will quickly learn how to use a computer.

Rupert is here

I heard someone in the drive, and went to peer from behind the dining-room curtain. It was Rupert, dressed in a T-shirt and low-slung jeans, delivering Tory party election leaflets. I saw his sharp canine just show, digging into his lower lip for a moment. Rupert, here, in my world! I'm not sure what I feel about this.

Ah, yes. John Lewis delivered – what was it? Something necessary and not very exciting. (The next delivery will be of coat-hangers, I have finally decided that it’s not very chic to keep my best clothes on rather run-down plastic-coated wire hangers that we got from the dry cleaner in the early ‘80s in Hong Kong – not chic, because they ruin my clothes).

So, where did I finish last time. Ah. I found myself sailing away on bat-wings of rapture and then –

There was a hammering at the windows of the castle. I sprang up, drooling with frustration, ran to see what was wrong. Albert and Liza were already there. It was daylight, we thought, who should be calling at this hour but some Mob who had somehow managed to fly up – had they hired a helicopter to invade the sacred technology-free spaces of Sanguinarian air?

No, there was a sudden eclipse, plunging the country into the deepest darkness; and in it had appeared Rupert, the captain of vampire guard who was holding Bloodlouse in the tower twenty miles away. He had come to tell me that Bloodlouse had escaped into the brief night of the eclipse. I knew my spouse was doomed. This was no great loss, since Rudolf was so much preferable, so I invited Rupert in. There was a glint in the captain’s bloodshot eye, a glint of wickedness, that lit in me a spark of deepest red fire – always I had been attracted to the trustworthy and the tender, but now, alas, I was about to be ravished by the evil and unreliable. I knew, just from the look on his face, that he would betray me, just as I was about to betray the lovely Rudolf – but oh, the time in between –

(the manuscript is broken off at this point, singed and irregular at the edges)

To fly between worlds, between Sanguinaria and here, to deposit on my doorstep a deep red rose, still slightly tacky where the blood hasn't yet dried - for me to send back a white rose in return - Fairtrade from Waitrose - is quite an undertaking. I'm not quite sure how I have managed it. Only a few days ago, a moon-month exactly since I came back here, I was wandering in the garden in the moonlight and a bat descended, the rose was there. The next night the bat came and picked up the rose I had bought from Waitrose. When the flittering creature took hold of it, the bloom flushed pink, then deeper and deeper red, and then vanished altogether.
I have a cold now, but it's worth it.

Oh, Rudolf! I loved you so much, yet I had my Duty. I was married to Bloodlouse, after all, and had to spend every day in his arms, in an eight-foot wide coffin, to embrace him, passionately, on the scarlet sheets - but every time my thoughts turned to the stalwart Rudolf, captain of my guard. Then one day, Bloodlouse looked at me and withdrew his fangs in the very act of sinking them into my throat. 'You little cheat, Chernya!' he snarled.

I knew then that the moment had come. It took a lot of planning, a secret visit to the Blood Bank, bribes - but one evening he didn't appear to the pre-breakfast gathering. He was nowhere to be found. (He was, in fact, being held by vampires I had suborned, in a tower twenty miles away from our castle).

Now of course his throne could not remain empty, that would have been against the Law. And though Rudolf was far better-looking than my royal spouse Bloodlouse, it's amazing what a lot of makeup can do. So he played the part of King. I stood beside him, I held his hand, he raised mine to his lips and gently bit my wrist-vein -and one morning he picked up the double-edged sword that lay between us in the wide coffin and tossed it out. The next minute we were in each others's arms. He fanged me. The exstasy of that moment is beyond description. I felt myself sailing away on bat-wings of rapture and then -

damn, there's the door. My John Lewis delivery. I shall post again, later.

I have been silent for a long while, I know. My mind has been wrapped in cobwebs. I shall only sketch in the details of my life since my last post – my husband had a heart attack and we were rushed to hospital in an ambulance – my daughters and my grandson came to visit – Jehovah’s witnesses came to the door and the dog leaped up at them – I lost my Internet connection for five minutes last night and also, at twenty past midnight, a screech owl flew over the house, heading northwards.

But at odd moments – queuing for the checkout in Waitrose – driving round the noisy hell of the hospital carpark, desperate for someone to leave – and also when I saw a dribble of blood on my husband’s face from a cut suddenly reluctant, because of the blood-thinning medicines, to clot as rapidly as it once did – visions of Sanguinaria have flashed back at me. And when I walk round the supermarket I find my trolley fills up with tomatoes, red peppers, and pomegranates, almost without my volition. I have to control myself to avoid cooking every meal with tomato sauce.

I have space now, a few minutes while my recovering husband sorts photographs on his laptop upstairs, to creep furtively to the computer and compile a few notes of my memories for the eyes only of those who may find their way to this site (and exit, gibbering maybe, with their keyboard jumbled forever into something not in the least resembling querty.)

The chief sociological problem for vampires living in an impregnable castle, whether or not designed by Lutyens, is that there is only room for a limited amount of vampires in one country. Sanguinaria is not very large, just big enough for vampires to overfly and return comfortably before dawn spreads its cheerful and horrid fingers over a land that wakes to another twelve – or in summer rather more – hours of freedom from the attentions of my ilk. It is unfortunate, therefore, that the inevitable result of the vampire’s bite is to create new vampires. One does not need much grasp of arithmetic (not to mention geometry, quantum mechanics, advanced calculus and primitive algebra) to realise that the livelihood of Sanguinaria’s vampires is constantly in danger of becoming unsustainable. We dealt with this by means of severe population control.

As a matter of routine, a certain number of my lesser subjects were issued with peaked caps and dark red uniforms and sent to patrol the boundaries, armed with stun-crossbows. If any foreign vampires attempted to enter our airspace they were stunned and fell to earth. If they failed to recover consciousness before dawn, they were usually found by local stakeholders and dealt with in the traditional manner. Otherwise they limped away, having been, we trusted, deterred from further incursions.

However, this policy totally failed to address the issue of our own dinners, which stimulated in a highly undesirable manner the numbers of undead on our territory. For this reason, after both victim and vampire had fallen into a daze of satiation, it was the job of lower-ranking vampires to escort their victim, now a vampire, to the borders forthwith. For myself (Queen Chernya,) and my auntie Queen Liza, my second-cousin-once-removed King Albert, and my consort King Bloodlouse, we sallied forth with attendants who would do the expatriation for us. Monarchs should do as little as possible for themselves – the less they do, the more their grateful subjects are likely to venerate, serve, and subsidise them.

I must insist that there was no inhumanity in this policy. If families were split up it was a necessary action for the good of our caste. Besides, it was clearly our duty to protect the local population from their relatives once our teeth had sunk into them and drunk their blood – or tomato juice.

Lucy Mangan, in the Guardian, wrote that nobody likes grilled tomato as part of a cooked breakfast, well, I must take issue with you there, Lucy M. I love grilled tomato, much more than black pudding and it's usually edible in hotel breakfasts, which is frequently more than one can say for the various forms of egg that have been either dessicated in a pan or made into a strange, solid yellow mass or boiled and then left to go cold but still soft inside of course, so if you crack it the horrid viscous white trails out. However, the tomato must be properly grilled and not just plopped under a grill for two seconds so inside it is still cold from the fridge.

I do like chilled tomato juice, however, and this gave me pause for thought. During the half-lifetime as Queen of the Vampires, which I described in the previous post, I mentioned that the blood was turned into tomato juice for me by the obliging angel since I do not like raw blood. But I am not sure whether the lovely chilled tomato juice that welled from the throats of beautiful men - this being what female vampires go for, after all, forget the gasping virgin girls - was transformed, at the moment of draught, as it were, into tomato juice, or whether the entire population of Sanguinaria went round with tomato juice permanently flowing in their veins. For if you live in a castle with no doors but only windows from which you issue at night in the form of a bat - good classical stuff here - you have no idea what the population is up to in the daytime. What would be the daily life of a human being with tomato juice flowing in their veins?

Maybe they were all pacifists, also, maybe, they were given to calling each other 'Old Fruit' - tomato being a fruit, after all. This is, I think, a better supposition than the idea that they might be all vegetables. It wouldn't matter for governmental purposes, since Sanguinaria is not a democracy. As a vampire, one was the Queen of the entire country. If they formed a mob to contest this simple fact, they failed due to the absence of doors at the castle, and maybe the tomato juice robbed them of the strength necessary to batter down granite walls - or the intelligence necessary to construct explosive means of doing so.

And now I must describe some of the appurtenances of the castle. The walls were all stone - I believe it was designed, originally, by Lutyens. There was some very nice herring-bone brickwork on the floors, and the furniture was either oak, Elizabethan-style, or else warmly upholstered in deep red velvet. The conservatory was Gothic, of course. There were warm fires constantly burning in all the fireplaces, fuelled by logs of wood. The provision of wood was a little difficult, but some of our younger family members worked out and, being very strong, would go out and wing their way back to the castle with a log held between them. There was a large window for the ingress of heavy materials. The shutters were, of course, kept closed during the daytime and the windows were further protected by heavy red velvet curtains. There was a massive library, full of first novels - it is well known that vampires like New Blood.

You might ask: Why did an angel take you there? Well, reader, I have to tell you that angels are the new vampires. I was told this the other day by a very good author, she must know. And they start off with many similarities: they fly, they can get in anywhere, and - well, they are white instead of black. Unless, of course, they are Dark Angels. Good title, that. But it is true that the angels are acquiring a taste for blood, therefore be careful how you invoke them. If an angel visits you, you may yourself become an angel, ie sexless and condemned to spend your life carrying messages for the Almighty. There is no pay, no pension, no time off, and the clothes are a bit draughty too. You get some pretty nice wings, though.

I have to go and see to the bread in this world, so will adjourn this account, and, if I am requested, maybe I shall continue on another occasion.

VISION STATEMENT

Welcome to Opening Trapdoors, a blog of my daily life - or maybe not. I shan't blog daily, so don't expect it, only when exciting things happen, but this morning a very exciting thing happened to me. I put some brief details on my Facebook page, but unfortunately they won't let you write a lot of stuff, so I have decided it's time to have my own individual blogspot.
What happened was, I was sitting at the computer with my belly full of porridge, when an angel appeared and took me into another dimension. I spent half a lifetime there, in the course of which I became Queen of the Vampires, this was a bit hard at first , but the angel transformed the blood into tomato juice, which I'm quite partial to. I lived in a castle by the sea with various members of my family who were also vampires, the castle had no doors, because of mobs, but plentiful windows that were handy to fly out of. There was a lovely conservatory full of bloodwort.
Then the angel came back and told me the postman was at the door in my other life, with a parcel, so I reappeared in time to receive some seed potatoes. Will I ever get back to Sanguinaria?