Whitstable Read Online Free PDF

their upbringing, he believed, and that could not be their own fault. We are all products of our pasts: none more so than he himself. Some said he was stuck in it. Another, unwanted, era. But he merely believed politeness and courtesy between human beings was a thing to be valued, in any era. Treasured, actually.
    The ironing board was out and she was making her way through a pile of washing, which she resumed, clearly not about to interrupt her workload on his account. She did not offer him a cup of tea or coffee and did not turn down the TV, but simply carried on where she’d left off, half-way through a man’s shirt, tan with a white collar, Cliff Richard’s variety show the activity’s accompaniment. The ceiling was textured with Artex swirls, the fireplace with its marble-effect surround boarded up with a sheet of unpainted hardboard, and a patio door led to a garden enclosed by fencing panels.
    He saw a recent edition of the Radio Times lying on the arm of the sofa, its cover announcing the introduction of a new villain into the Doctor Who pantheon. Dear old Roger Delgado looking as if he’d stepped straight from a Hammer film with his widow’s peak and black goatee. He thought of Jon Pertwee’s dandyish Doctor compared to his own “mad professor” saving the Earth from the invading hordes of soulless Daleks. He thought how easy it was to save the world, and how hard, in life, to save…
    “Why d’you want to talk about him?”
    “It was Carl who chose to talk to me, in fact. May I?” He noted she seemed confused by the question, so sat himself on the sofa anyway, his voice having to compete with Cliff Richard’s. “It was curious, very curious indeed. You see, he approached me earlier today confidently believing I was actually Doctor Van Helsing, the character I played in the Dracula films for Hammer several years ago.” He chuckled. “Many years ago, actually. How time flies…” He noticed a stack of books on the cushion next to him: The Second Hammer Horror Films Omnibus with Christopher Lee on its orange cover offering his bare chest to a victim, The Fifth and Seventh Pan Books of Horror Stories , the Arrow paperback editions of Dracula and The Lair of the White Worm . “I see he’s a fan…”
    “Monster mad. I wish he wasn’t. Not healthy if you ask me. None of it.”
    He smiled. “Dear lady, that’s my bread and butter you’re talking about. For my sins.”
    She didn’t match his smile and still didn’t turn down the television.
    He loosened his scarf. The gas-effect electric fire was cranked up and the skin on his neck was beginning to prickle.
    “Carl loves you very much, Mrs Drinkwater.” He chose his words carefully. “He cares an awful lot about what happens to you. The more he was talking to me, it was very clear he felt you were in danger. And he was in danger too. Very much so.”
    She grunted, straightening her back then slamming down the iron and running it back and forth up the sleeve. “He’s got an active imagination. Always did, always will. Got his bloody father to thank for that. Telling the kid those stories of his—ghosts, goblins, monsters—scaring him, keeping him awake. What do you expect?”
    “I don’t think stories hurt people, Mrs Drinkwater. Not really hurt.”
    “How do you know?” She set the iron on end with a thump. Rearranged the garment roughly. “Have you got children?”
    “No. Sadly.” He and Helen had not been blessed in that way.
    “Then you haven’t sat up with them crying and hugging you. Over stories. Or anything else for that matter, have you?”
    “That’s very true.”
    “So you don’t know anything about it, do you?”
    “No, I don’t. You’re quite right. But…” He gazed down at the carpet and noticed he was still, rather ridiculously, wearing his bicycle clips. He reached down and took them off, idly playing with them as he talked, as if they were a cat’s cradle or a magic trick. “But what he said concerns me.