Freddie didn’t like what was being said. He’d never heard his father say a bad word about the Family before, and he reckoned his mother was just as shocked as he considered her silence.
He heard her muttering something, followed by the bang and slap of dishes and cutlery as she started the washing-up.
Freddie crept away from the door, still preoccupied with what his father had said.
There were no lights on at the rear of the house, and even though it was his home Freddie felt his skin tingling.
He heard something in the back yard, a distant sloshing sound. He went quietly through the scullery and opened the back door as slowly and carefully as possible.
The stillness of the night was broken by a wet slapping sound, and a collection of low guttural moans.
Freddie stepped out into the backyard. The dry stink of old meat lent a tang to the air, and there was another smell too. He turned to his right to see Mr Pheeps leaning almost drunkenly by the corner of the house. The cobbles at his feet were shiny and slick with vomit. Mr Pheeps moaned.
‘Are you all right?’
Freddie cursed himself for asking the question. It had been an instinctive response. Mr Pheeps turned round, his arms limp, flapping in the air as if he’d lost the use of them. He slid down the wall and sat on the ground and threw his head back and laughed.
‘Tell me, how do you stand that awful pig swill you call food?’
Freddie clenched his fists. It was as if something had taken hold of him. He thought of the bird in the forest and what this thing had done to it, and for the moment he wasn’t afraid.
‘It’s not pig’s swill. It’s my mum’s cooking.’
Mr Pheeps narrowed his eyes.
‘Oh, we’re suddenly very brave now, aren’t we?’
Mr Pheeps crossed his ankles and wiped a hand under his nose.
‘You know, I don’t get hungry very often, but when I do I like proper sustenance. I mean I can just about stomach some of what passes for your food to fit in, but really my dietary requirements are much more refined than . . .’
He waved his hand lazily at Freddie.
‘To be honest, as long as I’ve walked this earth, I’ve never known what to call your kind.’
Freddie took a step closer to Mr Pheeps. Mr Pheeps smiled, but his eyes were filled with contempt.
‘What are you?’ Freddie asked.
Mr Pheeps shook his head and chuckled.
‘Why are you here?’
Mr Pheeps looked at him for a long time before answering. ‘I’m waiting.’
‘For what?’
‘The right moment. There’s always a right moment, and that moment is almost here.’
Mr Pheeps stood up and dusted his coat down. He looked piercingly at Freddie.
‘Let me show you something.’
Freddie’s fear was gone and now it was replaced by a low burning anger as he stood in his brother’s room.
His father had given it to Mr Pheeps that first night they’d met him on the road, and the idea of someone else in here appalled him. He couldn’t understand how his father had given up the room so readily, but he could see that this man had a way with words where his father was concerned.
The room contained a brass bed, a chest of drawers and a little nightstand. The walls were yellow, and the carpet brown, but it always had a homely feel to it, a kind of charm.
But James was gone now, and even with two of them standing in the room it felt empty.
Mr Pheeps nodded at his leather holdall.
‘You’ve been wondering what’s inside the bag, haven’t you?’
Freddie straightened up and tried to hold Mr Pheeps’s gaze. ‘I haven’t.’
Mr Pheeps grinned. He knew he was lying.
He leaned down towards the holdall and unzipped it. Freddie heard the delicate clink clink of glass on glass.
‘They’re all empty now,’ said Mr Pheeps. ‘Well, except for one.’ Mr Pheeps held up an empty jar with a dirty yellow label. The letters on the label were slightly faded with age. ‘This one I found in Maldon in 1200 or thereabouts. It was pretending to be a sailor. How quaint.’ He put it aside and picked up another. ‘This one I found skulking in a bog in Ireland during the Famine. I found it very sustaining. Rather ironic really. But, as I said, all are now empty. Except for one.’
He looked slyly at Freddie. ‘Would you like to see?’
Freddie’s newfound courage seemed to be waning a little, but he steeled himself.
Mr Pheeps took another squat jar from the holdall and cradled it in his hands.
The jar seemed to contain a small glowing cloud, white at the edges, with a pulsing sapphire light shimmering at its heart. Looking at it made Freddie feel as if he were in a dream where everything felt right and was in its proper place, and there was nothing in the world but hope and love, and that was all that mattered. The shining light moved with a languorous delicacy, and it was beautiful and strange, and somehow Freddie knew it was alive.
‘What is it?’ he asked, his voice hoarse with terror and awe.
‘A delicacy. Something that provides me with proper sustenance. Indeed, a delicacy that, once consumed, might sustain me for a hundred years.’
Freddie had no idea what he was talking about. He was still transfixed by the beauty of the cloud.
‘I met her on a bridge in Budapest. I think it was sometime in 1888. It was a winter’s night. Cold. Beautiful. Lit with stars. I’d sensed her in the city a few days before, and, as is my habit, I waited. Waited for the right moment.’
Mr Pheeps held the jar up to his own face, and the blue white light softened the cracks in his dreadful visage.
‘She knew who I was the moment she laid eyes on me, but by then it was already too late. I hadn’t seen her kind in eighty years.
