The White Wolf's Son: The Albino Underground Read online

  We were a short distance from the Lake District and in easy driving distance of Leeds, so the house was convenient for almost any kind of activity. Sometimes we would drive into Leeds for the fun of it, visit one of Dad’s old friends and spend an afternoon in those wonderful covered markets, the Arcades, all dark green Victorian iron girders and sparkling glass. I loved our trips to Leeds.

  Only one episode spoils the memory of my early childhood in Yorkshire. I would wake in my bed with a full moon streaming into the window, showing me all the things of my daytime life: toy boxes, modeling table, audio stuff, books, various projects I had half started, but they had all taken on a mysterious and even sinister quality. As I sank back into sleep, I remember screaming a loud, terrible scream which did not wake me, but which I learned later woke the rest of the house. I don’t remember much else. I always woke up very frightened.

  I remember one dream which was especially terrifying and which remained in my memory (whereas the others tended to fade): I was out on the common and had somehow wandered into a deep cave. I was lost but knew home was fairly close. I just had to find it. Below me, in semidarkness, was some sort of city with pale, slender towers like spikes of rock. And these strange creatures were coming towards me, pointing. They were not particularly unfriendly, these figures in high, conical hats, almost likeelongated Ku Klux Klansmen. I couldn’t make out their faces, yet I was sure they weren’t fully human. I heard a shout and looked back. There was a man following me. I was more frightened of him than of the creatures approaching me. His face, too, was in shadow, beneath the broad brim of a black hat. He had a wide white collar worn over a black jerkin. A Puritan. Trying to escape them all, I darted aside and was suddenly in a deep, peaceful greenwood. For a moment I felt safe. Then I saw a man with bone-white skin and red eyes standing on a large bough over the path I was on. He was dressed in a long turban, vividly colored cloak and sashes swirling around him, his large black sword held high as he reached towards me across the treetops. “How… ?” he said. He was mouthing a question I couldn’t hear. He could only help me if I answered him. He reminded me of my granddad, but was much younger. I knew he was trying to save me, but something was stopping him. “How…? Grunewald? Mittelmarch?” Those are the only words I remembered.

  Then I was running from him, too, running down towards where the men in conical hats waited for me, running straight into the tall body of yet another bizarre creature who looked down at me with kindly brown eyes. I think he was a friend of my grandfather’s. A huge red fox, dressed elaborately in late-eighteenth-century finery, who smiled his pleasure at seeing me, displaying sharp, white teeth.

  “Well, I suppose I’m in good hands,” I said, trying to show I was grateful for his friendship.

  “Paws,” he said, with the literal logic of a dream, “actually. My dear mademoiselle, we must hurry…

  Then the Puritan was behind him, his skull-like facegrinning as he lifted a huge pistol and shot the fox in the back. With a look of surprise and grief the fox fell.

  I began to run again…

  I was screaming.

  The local doctor was called, but he wasn’t much help. After trying me on a few different prescriptions, he eventually admitted he was baffled. I then had a psychiatrist for a few sessions until I started to get better on my own as the dreams, or feelings, never recurred. I could still remember the people of that dream, but Mr. Handforth, the local vicar and a bit of a family friend, was the most help. He took me seriously and said I seemed to have quite a lot of “guardian angels” looking out for my safety. In his deep, cultured accents he spoke of my troubled spirit. He thought I had been a soul under attack.

  “And should we worry that she believes herself under attack?” I remember my father asking him.

  “Mr. Bek, she was under attack,” the vicar insisted. “I’m convinced of it. There is no saying those forces will never be back. But meanwhile…” He spread his hands and sighed.

  “Strange that of all of us, she should not have been spared,” I was puzzled by my grandmother saying one day. I had no idea what she meant, and didn’t really let it bother me much. Then, as my dreams stopped coming, I forgot all about it, though I did like the idea of the giant fox. He was like something out of Alice in Wonderland!

  My grandparents’ family estate had been in Germany, but my grandfather had given the whole place over to the nation years ago to use as a rest home for aged people suffering from dementia. Granddad was a tall, rather gaunt man, strikingly handsome as my grandma was beautiful. She was stockier, though equally striking. Remarkably, they were both pure albinos with rare red eyes, just like the man I had seen in those dreams. The two of them were clearly deeply in love. As he grew frail, she grew ever more solicitous of his health. Though my parents clearly loved the count and countess, they sometimes thought them a little old-fashioned with their decided opinions about modern pop culture! My mum and dad liked rock-and-roll, but Countess von Bek, for instance, had decided opinions about modern pop music! The only light music she was willing to accept was played by the 1930s big bands.

  My grandparents’ own circle of friends occasionally visited Ingleton. An odd, often bohemian collection of old people, they sometimes seemed a little remote from us but evidently took pleasure in seeing children about and almost always brought us gifts. They would disappear off to my grandparents’ wing of the house or go for long walks, talking about obscure and mysterious things. We were never particularly curious about them. Some, we gathered, had been anti-Nazis in Germany and had known our grandparents during the Second World War.

  We spent most of the year in London, so we knew how to look after ourselves, but we enjoyed immense freedom in Yorkshire. We were allowed to range across the fells at will as long as we took our cell phones. We weren’t idiots. We avoided going down into the various cave systems which ran under large parts of the hillside. These systems were the haunt of cavers, desperate to discover new and connecting routes, just as the high, shining terraces were favorite places for climbers, some of whom returned every year and were known to us. Gradually, under their expert if slightly condescending supervision, my brother and sister and I learned technical rock climbing as well as caving. Yorkshire was just the greatest place I knew in the whole world.

  My adventure began on one of those slow, wonderful, dreaming, sparkling summer afternoons you get in the dales. The whole landscape takes on a magical quality. It’s easy to imagine you’re in fairyland. The lazy air is full of insects, the grass full of surprising little plants, such as wild orchids and fritillaria, all different kinds of mosses and the tiny creatures living in them. The hills seem endless and the days infinite. Only an idiot couldn’t love it. But that day I had no company.

  My dad had driven my grandparents into Lancaster to get the train to London, and my mum had gone with him, taking my brother, Alfy, and sister, Gertie, to shop for new shoes and some art supplies. They had a few other plans, so they would probably not be back until the evening. I had stayed behind because I thought one of my favorite old films was coming on the television. They had left Mrs. Hawthornthwaite, a kindly dumpling of a lady, in charge of me. Only after they’d gone did I discover that I had misread the TV Guide; my film, The Thief of Baghdad, had been on the previous week. Now I had nothing to look forward to and was doubly bored.

  After lunch Mrs. H, probably irritated by my deep sighs, told me it was all right if I wanted to go down to the shallows (our end of the river where it emerged from the woods) to look for fish. It wasn’t the most exciting option, but it was better than hanging around watching her load and unload the washing machine, since she wouldn’t allow me to help her.

  As usual, I took the cell phone. I had instructions to phone her if I needed her or got into any sort of trouble. “Mr. H can be down there in a minute or two,” she assured me as she saw me off. “It doesn’t matter how silly or trivial a feeling you get; just phone up. He’ll know what to do. And if there’s nowt to do, so much the be
tter. He needs to be kept busy.”

  Mr. Hawthornthwaite, an amiable man with a shock of snow-white hair and with startling blue eyes in ruddy features, was up in the Tower mending a pipe and could be heard cursing mildly from time to time as metal clanged against metal.

  I put one of Mum’s old Indian bags over my shoulder. Its tassels hung down almost to the ground, but it was the best thing I had to carry my bits and pieces in, including the phone. On the way to the river I spent some while playing around in a ruined building we called the Castle. It was actually part of an old quarry, with a loading platform and rail tracks still running into it where the First World War graphite trucks used to unload, transferring the stuff to the steam train which ran along a narrow-gauge line to Ingleton Station. The remains of the graphite mill was on the other side of the village. It had blown up in 1917. Some thought it was the work of German saboteurs, but my dad said it was probably due to someone’s neglect.

  Rural Yorkshire has dozens of similar abandoned workings and buildings. There was still an active gravel quarry up the road from us. Occasionally we could hear them dynamiting. Their explosives were why we were never allowed to go into any local caves. A man and his two children had been trapped in White Scar Cave some years ago, hiding from a bull, and only luck had saved them. The quarrymen were not the only ones to use explosives. Even today you would hear a thump and the house would shake, usually because the least responsible cavers, the hooligans of the caving world, were dynamiting new routes into the systems below!

  I had quite a decent game running in the Castle, but by about three o’clock in the afternoon I had begun to wonder about going back for tea or continuing down to the river. Then I heard a sharp crack from the direction of the woods above and assumed that the quarry was blasting, though I hadn’t noticed the usual warning siren. When there were no further explosions, I swung my feet from the platform and continued on down the grassy bank from the dirt path to the river. Taking off my shoes on the bank, I waded into the clear water and was soon absorbed in seeking out whatever swam over the pebbles.

  I was hoping to find freshwater crayfish, those tiny, almost transparent relatives of the lobster, but the sun on the water was too bright, and all I found were a few minnows. My cell phone was in a little holder swung across my body, and I thought I heard it start to ring. False alarm. I was on the point of giving up on the fishing trip when suddenly the phone began to make a very peculiar noise, almost as if it was warning me that my battery was low. Although I had recharged it while I was having lunch, I pulled it out and flipped it open, wondering if Mrs. Hawthornthwaite was trying to get in touch with me. She sometimes rang at teatime if there was something special, like toasted scones or crumpets, which were best eaten hot.

  The phone was completely dead. I pressed the recognition button without success. There were no text messages. So I put the thing away again, thinking, a passing fluke of the hills, and returned my attention to the river until a noise from above me told me that someone was on the path. I got up in a hurry. This was all a bit spooky. There he was, a monster of a man, swinging out of the woods: a tall, bulky figure wrapped in a big leather overcoat, his head shaded by a wide-brimmed felt hat, his eyes hidden by reflecting sunglasses, with a scarf drawn up to his nose, as if it were winter and he were feeling the cold. Perhaps he was worried about inhaling dust from the quarry’s latest blast.

  I must admit I felt a little more vulnerable than usual as the burly man stopped on the path high above me and lifted a gloved hand in greeting. His accent was thick, deep and vaguely familiar.

  “Good afternoon, young lady.”

  He was probably trying to sound friendly, but I gave him a cold nod in response. I hated people calling me “young lady.” It seemed condescending. Perhaps a little ostentatiously I sat down and began buckling the straps of my shoes.

  But the man did not walk on. “You live around here, do you?” he asked. There was an edge, an undertone to his voice, that I really didn’t like.

  Again I nodded. I couldn’t see anything of his face at all and began to wonder if he was deliberately hiding it. He reminded me of the pictures of the Invisible Man I had seen in the Alan Moore comics my brother collected. He hardly seemed any better tempered than that character. Was that why I was so wary of him?

  “Am I on the right path for the village of Ingleton?” he asked.

  “You’re on the back road,” I told him. “Keep going and it’ll take you to the middle of the square across from the butcher’s. The newsagent will be down on the main road to your right.”

  He thanked me and began to move on. Then he hesitated. He turned, fingering the lower part of his face, still covered by the scarf. “Has anyone else come this way recently?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’m looking for a rather thin, pale gentleman. A foreigner. Likes to wear black. He would have arrived a day or so ago. Mr. Klosterheim? Might he be staying in these parts?”

  “You could ask at the newsagent for the Bridge Hotel,” I told him. “They’ll put you right for where the Bridge is, on the other side of the viaduct.” There were also a couple of guesthouses closer, but I didn’t feel like offering him too much information. His had been a very odd question for anyone to ask in Ingleton. I wondered where he could have come from. He wore high, thick, flat-soled boots of battered leather, reaching to his knee. His trousers were tucked into the boots. He had no haversack, and he didn’t look like any kind of hiker I’d ever seen. The clothes were old-fashioned without being identifiable with any historical period. Instinctively I was glad of the distance between us, and intended to keep it. Slowly I finished fastening my shoes.

  He grunted, thought over what I’d said, then began moving. He was soon gone, clumping along the track like a campaigning soldier. The track was used by everyone local and curved downwards into the village. It was the shortest way and roughly paralleled the main paved road which passed our house above. For us it could often seem just as quick to go down that back road than to take the car and try to find a parking space in the village.

  The encounter had unsettled me. I was getting flashes of those old, bad dreams. Nothing specific. Not even a tangible image. It was also possible I had eaten something which disagreed with me. Standing on the riverbank, I tried my phone again. It still wasn’t working, although now I got a buzzing, like the sound of distant bees. I decided it was time to go home.

  I wasn’t used to feeling the shivers on the sunlit commons of Ingleton during a golden summer afternoon.

  I scrambled up the grassy bank, reached the path, then ran up through the green hillocks over the common, past Beesley’s, until I got to the back gate of our house. Mrs. Hawthornthwaite was hanging white linens up to dry on a line stretched beside part of our vegetable garden. She insisted it was the best place for laundry, since the linens especially were refreshed by the growing carrots and brussels sprouts. As a girl she had read the tip in Woman’s Weekly, and always applied it. Her whites glittered, reflecting the bright sunshine. Starched or unstarched, they blossomed in the breeze like the sails of fairy ships.

  The main walled garden was to the front of the house, still landscaped much as it had been in the seventeenth century, with junipers, cedars and poplars surrounding what was mostly smooth lawn arranged in terraces. The lawn was not good for much except looking at, since there was such a slope on it. When we wanted to play cricket or some other game, we had a flattened area out of sight behind the row of poplars and willows on the far side of the tiny stream which dropped underground long before it reached the main river. You could just see down to the back road from there.

  I was half-tempted to check if the stranger was still on the path, but he would probably have reached the village by now. Something about him continued to bother me. His heavy, menacing masculinity had made its way into my head.

  “You feeling hungry, dear?” Mrs. Hawthornthwaite was surprised to see me back. She looked at her watch as if wondering why I would be
home so early on such a beautiful sunny day.

  “A bit,” I said. “Is Mum home yet?’ I knew the answer.

  “Not yet, dear. They were going to wait for the fresh fish to be landed in Morecombe, remember? They might have gone to the pictures, but there wasn’t much on in Lancaster.” She frowned. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, thanks,” I said. “It’s just that I saw a man on the back road. He scared me a bit.”

  She grew alert. “He didn’t—”

  “He didn’t do anything except ask me the way to Ingleton and if I knew some foreign visitor,” I told her. “Then he went on to Ingleton. I suggested he ask about his friend at the Bridge. It’s okay. I just thought I’d come home. For some reason my phone’s not working.”

  She accepted this. Mrs. Hawthornthwaite had a way of trusting our instincts, just as we trusted hers.

  I went into the big, warm living room which looked out towards Morecombe. It got the western sun from two sets of windows. Through them you could see the roofs of the village below. I took the binoculars from the shelf and focused them on the little bit of the back road that was visible. All I saw was the vicar’s wife, coasting her bike down the track. As usual, Mrs. Handforth had her big orange cat, Jerico, in the front basket. They both seemed to be enjoying the ride. Nobody else was about. I went up to my own room, planning to plug the phone in and recharge it, but when I got it out it was working perfectly. I wondered if the weather had something to do with the problem. Sunspots? I had only the vaguest idea of what sunspots were.

  A bit later I had some bread and jam and a glass of milk in the kitchen. Now I was really bored. Mrs. Hawthornthwaite suggested I find a book and go outside again. I didn’t have a better idea. I took one of my mum’s favorite E. Nesbit books, The House of Arden, and went downstairs, out of the front door, through the yard, and crossed the paved road to Storrs Common.