Читать книгу The Reluctant Vampire Omnibus - Gary Morecambe, Eric Morecambe - Страница 8

King Victor smiles with venomous grace

At Wilf the Werewolf’s hairy face.

In the village of Katchem the clock had just struck midnight, although the hands said the time was a quarter to twelve. The reason was that Victor was sitting on the pointer, his cloak billowing in the wind.

Above the din of the clock and the strong wind, the four people in the tavern heard the howling of a lone wolf; a long, piercing sound that almost stopped the blood flowing through the body. A howl so chilling as to make the serving girl, Areta, drop and break an empty Stein mug she was clearing off a table. Her father, Klaus Grabbo, who owned the tavern, gave her a look of annoyance. She, in return, gave him a quick look of apology.

Then the wolf stopped howling and within seconds the large window next to the door burst open and Victor stood in its frame. A flash of lightning lit up the tavern for a mere second, followed by a deathly silence. Areta and her father, with their two customers, stood like statues.

‘Gutt evenink,’ Victor the First said, smiling, showing a fine set of teeth of which two were noticeably longer than the others. ‘I vould like a drink, mine host. A drink out of mine special bottle, ya?’

He crossed to the bar with the movement, ease and grace of mercury on glass. Grabbo picked out a bottle hidden at the back of the bar.

The liquid in the bottle was blood red. With a shaking hand Grabbo poured from the bottle until Victor hissed, ‘Enough’. Then, with a hard look around the room at the other two customers, he raised the glass to his lips with the Vampires’ toast:

A soldier’s in love with his rifle,

A sailor’s in love with his deck,

A Vampire’s in love when he kisses a girl

And leaves two holes in her neck

He swallowed the blood red liquid in one fast gulp. The other two customers kept their eyes averted from Victor, not wanting to antagonise him in any way and not wanting to be noticed by him either. Victor smacked his lips and said:

‘Excellent. Really very gutt. Eighteen years olt, I vould say, ya?’

The landlord picked up the bottle and looked at it before answering. ‘Nineteen,’ he said.

‘Nineteen? Vos she really? I vould haff said eighteen. Maybe, mine bar-keeping frent, you are keeping it too cool. I don’t like it ven it’s too cool. Unterstant, Grabbo? I don’t like it ven it’s too colt, ya?’

‘Yes, Sir.’ Grabbo grovelled. Areta continued to clear the tables although she had done them twice already.

Victor watched her, a smile coming to his lips. ‘You know somethink, Grabbo?’

‘Sir?’

‘You daughter has become very beautiful, ya?’

‘Er … thank you, Sire.’

‘Ya, very beautiful inteed. Giff me a drink off the twenty year olt.’

Grabbo filled the waiting glass from another hidden bottle.

‘Vill you join me, mine frent?’

‘Er no, Your Greatness. Er … I’m off it at the moment. I’m … er … trying to lose weight,’ Grabbo quickly lied, not wanting to offend a customer.

‘I haff the perfect vay off losing veight. Vot you do is simple like your two customers over there.’ Victor looked very hard at the two other customers. ‘You eat nothing but roobs, ant then …’

‘Roobs?’ questioned Grabbo.

‘Yah, roobs.’

‘What are roobs, Sir?’

‘Roobs are a special fruit. They are very rare ant are only to be fount ten feet unterground.’

‘But, how will they help me to lose weight, if I may ask, Sire?’

‘It’s obvious. The exercise vile you are diggink for them. And then, ven you haff fount them you von’t eat them because they have such a horrit taste. That vay you vill lose even more veight, ya?’ Here Victor burst into almost uncontrollable laughter; laughter so chilling that the mirror behind the bar cracked.

Grabbo looked into the mirror. He could see his own reflection and the look of terror on his own pale face. He could also see the entire room. But he could not see Victor who was stood next to him because, being a Vampire, Victor had no reflection.

‘I’m sorry, mine frent,’ Victor said, looking at the cracked mirror and although Grabbo couldn’t see the reflection of Victor, Victor looked towards the mirror and straightened his tie.

A long scratch at the door of the tavern made everyone, including Victor, turn their heads. No one moved. The door slowly creaked open. There stood a smiling werewolf, a man covered in long, shaggy wolfhair looking a bit dishevelled on account of the rather strong wind. He had the werewolf’s almost red, fiery eyes and long, canine teeth. He stood erect in the doorway with the wind blowing his long hair as a woman blows on a fur coat. King Victor looked at him and thought he looked like a rather untidy crow’s nest.

‘Come in, Vilf, ant close the toor,’ Victor said.

Wilf the Werewolf, as he was known, walked into the tavern, shutting the door behind him.

‘Hello Victor,’ he said in a rather sing-song voice. ‘How’s the wife and kids?’ He was pleased to be indoors on such a night as this and he showed it by wagging his tail.

‘They are all very vell, thank you, mine covered-in-hair frent, and it vos very nice of you to ask.’

‘Not at all,’ Wilf smiled. ‘You know me. I’m very fond of your brood. How’s poor Valentine? Is he any better?’

‘Whom tolt you he vos ill?’

‘Dick.’

‘Tick?’

‘Yes, Dick. You remember Dick … Dick the big, daft dwarf,’ he almost barked.

‘Ah yes, Tick. Tick the bick taft twarf. Ya, I remember him. Ya.’

‘He told me Val wasn’t too good,’ Wilf continued. ‘I met him in the forest and we went for a walkies. That’s when he told me.’

‘Vell, Valentine’s a lot better I think. The Doctor’s vith him now. Doctor Plump.’

‘Plump?’ Wilf thought a while. ‘Doctor Plump?’

‘Ya.’

‘Yes, I think I used to go about with his alsatian. I’m not sure.’

‘Very tall.’

‘No. Short, rather fat with a scruffy tail.’

‘I mean the Doctor.’

‘Oh!’ Wilf snarled sweetly.

Areta had joined the other two customers while her father was once more behind the bar. Wilf joined Victor at the bar.

‘Can I get you anythink?’ King Victor asked Wilf.

‘No. No thank you, Victor. I’m off it at the moment. The hard stuff, that is. The vet says it’s best if I keep off it for a few more days. I’ve got a touch of hard pad.’ He showed Victor the sole of his left foot. ‘That’s why I’m limping a bit.’ He put his hind foot gingerly back on the floor.

‘I vould think you get the hard pad from all the runnink you do, ya?’

‘Never stop. I’m always running,’ Wilf said proudly, turning and leaning his back on the bar.

‘Ya, you run a lot, Vilf.’

‘I’m always running. Well, you see, farmers are always after me for frightening their sheep and enraged parents and all that, and bears and the like. Bears don’t like us much so they chase us a lot. Parents, farmers, bears … That’s why I do a lot of running, you see. I’ll tell you what …’

‘Vot?’

‘If you were to throw a stick now, across this floor to the other side of the room, I’d run after it. It’s our nature, you see.’

‘Vould you also brink it back?’

‘Sometimes, but sometimes I forget.’ Wilf looked around the tavern once more. ‘Mind you, I don’t run so much when I’m not a werewolf. When I’m an ordinary human being I like to sit at home with my legs up. I rest because I know that as soon as the full moon comes up again I go to bed and in about ten or twenty minutes or so I look down at the back of my hands and the hairs are starting to grow.’

‘Vot do you do then?’ Victor asked with keen interest.

‘Well, I get up and go on to the landing and shout through my mum’s door, “The hairs are growing Mum, so I’ll be off now and I’ll see you in about a week or ten days” and she shouts back something like, “All right, love. Be a good boy and bring back a fresh loaf with you” so then I’m off again, running.’

Wilf finished talking and noticed that everybody in the tavern was listening to him. This made him feel quite important.

Victor nodded agreement all through Wilf’s conversation. He turned to Grabbo saying, ‘I’ll haff one for the road, Grabbo. I’ll haff half a forty year olt.’ Turning back to Wilf he said:

‘I mustn’t haff anythink too stronk at the moment. I’m meeting the vife later on ant takink her out for a bite.’

‘Where?’ asked Wilf with enough interest in his voice to make Victor think, ‘He vants to come too.’

‘Er, vell, it’s more off a small family get-together than anythink else. Just the vife, Vernon, me and Valentine, if he’s any better. Ve vill propaply go and vait at the bridle path ant see if there is anythink vorth bitink.’

Victor was trying to get away quickly. ‘Oh, gutt Lord, is that the time? I tolt the vife I vould pick her up at twelf thirty.’

‘Is that the time she falls down?’ Wilf asked.

‘Pardon me?’ said a puzzled Victor.

‘You said you would pick her up at twelve thirty, so I was asking you if that was the time she fell down … Twelve thirty?’

‘Vilf, I haff never unterstood your jokes ant I still don’t. Guttbye Vilf,’ Victor said, patting Wilf on the head and giving him a tickle under the chin. Wilf showed his approval by licking Victor’s ear.

Victor left the tavern the same way as he had arrived – by the window. Areta went to close the window after him, thinking, ‘He’s just like all men. Never closes anything after him.’

Grabbo started to clean the glasses and whistled a late night tune. The tune was very popular in Gotcha at the moment. It was called ‘Show me the way to my cottage and my bed’. He hoped Wilf and the other two customers might take the hint and realise how late it was. But Wilf was in a talking mood that night.

‘Nice man, Victor, eh Grabbo?’

‘Charming,’ Grabbo said, oozing sarcasm that went straight over Wilf’s head. Wilf was quiet for a few seconds and then asked:

‘I don’t suppose you have anybody fresh in the cold cellar have you Grabbo?’

‘No,’ said Grabbo truthfully while putting the forty year old away.

‘It’s just that I fancy somebody fresh, that’s all.’

‘You heard what my father said, Wilf,’ Areta said, bustling around and clearing the table of the two customers who took the hint and left without saying goodnight to anyone.

‘Well, have you got any crisps then?’ Wilf asked.

‘What flavour?’ Grabbo asked with a tired voice.

After a moment’s thought Wilf said, ‘Human please.’

Grabbo threw him a pack of crisps saying, ‘Smokey bacon, take it or leave it.’

‘I’ll take it,’ Wilf said, his lips and teeth tearing open the packet.

‘That will be three lukas.’

‘What?’ Wilf asked, spraying crisps all over the bar.

‘That will be three lukas. Are you going deaf, Wilf?’

‘I haven’t got three lukas. As a matter of fact I haven’t got any money at all.’

‘No money? No money at all?’ Grabbo said, looking at his daughter.

‘No. You see, when I’m a werewolf I haven’t any pockets so I can’t carry any money.’

‘All right, Wilf,’ Grabbo said in a bored and tired voice. ‘You owe me three lukas.’

‘Thanks Grabbo.’

‘That’s O.K. Now take your crisps and go.’

‘Yes. Well goodnight then, Grabbo, and goodnight Areta. By the way, Areta, I’m not a werewolf next week so I was wondering if you would come to the fair with me a week on Thursday?’

‘Goodnight Wilf,’ Areta said softly.

‘Goodnight Areta,’ Wilf said sadly.