The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

Outdoors, in the clear light that had painted a disquieting picture on Camilla's mirror, Sheridan walked around the shore of the sea lough. He stopped on a rocky outcrop above the water and sat cross-legged, taking camera lenses out of his bag. A boy of twelve or thirteen came sailing along on a bicycle. The tall man had seen the boy coming from a long way off. Without appearing to do so, he was displaying his wares. The bike swerved to a halt, leaving an impressive skid mark on the gravel track. Sheridan grinned at the sound, and went on thoughtfully laying out his big black truncheons of lenses, his electronic light meters, his tripod. Here comes the boy, the last, late beauty of childhood wrecked by a bullet-headed haircut, magnetically attracted to the stranger: a dignified scowl on his face.

"What'r ye doing?"

"I'm going to take some pictures."

The boy comes closer. Sheridan is an adult, and therefore of no account, but he's dressed like a big teenager, and big teenagers are gods.

"There's seals in the lough. But yez won't see them."

Sheridan shrugged, indifferent to the kind of wildlife that most tourists pursue. "There are seals in a zoo. I'll take pictures of the light and the water." He grinned, as the boy came closer still. "Maybe I'll take pictures of you."

Sheridan drove an ancient Bentley, 1940s vintage, British racing green, a fabulous monster. The car suffered some kind of mechanical failure. It had to be nursed to the town beyond the pretentious roadhouse and left there for diagnosis and treatment. Camilla was not exactly ill, but she was tired out by weeks of travel. She took to her bed in number four, and soon had Noreen waiting on her hand and foot. The passing trade of heavy Americans would have been astonished at this unheard-of behaviour, but they never heard anything about it. Short shrift, in and out, was Noreen's usual way. Her con-versation was all reserved for the beautiful stranger. She was in and out of number four all day, sometimes jigging baby Roisin on her arm, very concerned at Camilla's birdlike appetite.

"Sure, yez don't eat enough to keep a sparrow alive," she sighed, stroking back Camilla's lovely blonde hair. A little physical intimacy had become natural: a touch here, an arm around the shoulders there, nothing shocking, just like sisters.

"I'm eating very well," protested Camilla, with a gentle smile. "You look after me wonderfully." The mirror in that apology for a bathroom obstinately showed a face more worn and wan than Camilla liked to see, but it was deceptive. She had been at a low ebb, running on empty: she was feeling stronger every day.

"Is the photography a living, then?" asked Noreen curiously, lifting a tray with a soup bowl that had barely been tasted, glancing admiringly at the food refused, that mark of true sophistication. Roisin was on her arm in a sick-stained pyjama suit.

"Oh, yes. A very good living."

"And you?"

Camilla said she didn't have a job. She didn't need one.

"So ye're like a kept woman?" said Noreen, round-eyed. "Jayus, I couldn't do that. I'd be afraid to do that."

Slightly needled, Camilla laughed. "Oh, no. No, no. What I mean is we work together. He takes the pictures, I write the text, we make beautiful books." Neither of them needs a job. They are financially independent, but it's better not to say so. And it's very true that Sheridan makes a living for himself out of his photography. Very true.

Thumps and yells from downstairs. The children are indoors. There's "a bug going around" which has robbed the oldest boy of his playmates, so he's at home watching television. The girl has stayed in too, for some reason, and therefore also the younger mites. "I hope to God they don't get sick," mutters Noreen bitterly. "It would be like their awkwardness, in August when I have me hands full with the plaguey tourists."

Camilla murmurs something apologetic. But no! Noreen won't hear a word. No! She's loving having Camilla here. Looking after Camilla is like a big treat, like going to the pictures. Like going to the hairdresser's she adds, dreamily; and sitting there reading a magazine The height of Noreen's notions of idle splendour.

Sheridan takes a walk in the lichen-gnarled oak wood by the shore, in the company of a ten-year-old girl. Not the daughter of the B&B, another little girl. He shows her things that she has never known, and tells her the names of flowers and trees which have merely been flowers, trees , to the barren little mind of the modern peasant. Here's a wood ants' nest, a treacle-brown heap of sifted soil that looks like a small grave: but when you take a second glance the grave is heaving. "Did you know," says Sheridan, "that ants are farmers?" They lie down together, the tall man and the little girl, in the leaf-litter and watch an ant-shepherd teasing a drop of nectar from the pointed belly of one of its aphid charges.

"Holy Jesus God," says the little girl. "It's like a science-fiction film."