came blustering in off the grey North Sea; so that he shivered and turned up the collar of his overcoat. There remained something less than an hour before he must board his train back to Edinburgh. He knew he could probably find some acceptable item of regular food in the train’s buffet car, until which time he could do without. But of course, that was regular food—
—And in fact the promenade was not entirely deserted…
Tiny stick figures at this distance, a couple walked hand in hand at the northern extreme of the esplanade, their raincoats blowing in the wind. Another couple sat in a parked car, unwilling to brave the weather. To the south, a young boy and his dog ignored the wind and played on the strand, dodging the waves where they foamed on a pebble beach.
But of humanity that appeared to be all, and the situation wasn’t at all to Hemmings’ liking. He had been in error to seek prey here; and now, perhaps exaggerated by frustration, an overactive imagination, his need was beginning to make itself felt, becoming ever more insistent.
Oh, he knew he could withstand it, for weeks and months at a time if absolutely necessary; but not for too long. He would not “starve,” as it were—could not, as far as he was aware, not that he had ever put it to the test—but like any addict he would suffer. Then as he felt his own life-force waning, he would lust yet more urgently after the essence of some other.
Hemmings’ thoughts went back to the first time:
That was about this time of year just two years ago, a few months before his “retirement” from a teaching position at the University. His father, Arthur Hamilton Hemmings—a mathematician before him—had been fighting abdominal cancer for some time. Toward the end, unwilling to submit to pointless intrusive surgery, he had left the hospital, hired a part-time nurse, and gone home to Dalkeith close to Edinburgh to die in a familiar, hopefully anodyne environment.
His only son, Professor Gordon J. Hemmings, had taken leave of absence from the University on compassionate grounds and had gone to Dalkeith to take over the nurse’s duties when she could not be there to look after the old man’s needs.
Now as an ex -Professor, the fat man remembered it well…
He had never enjoyed an easy relationship with his father; which was probably because his mother had died giving birth to him, an event from which the old man had never quite recovered. Hemmings recalled how, even as a child, he had sensed aversion if not actual animosity in his father.
Later, as he grew into a fat young boy, he had sensed that he was suffering some kind of silent, covert punishment in the way he was forever being tested; though not so much physically as mentally. By the time he was eight years of age the old man had taken to routinely setting him increasingly difficult mathematical problems to solve; indeed, these would have been hard enough even for a majority of numerically accomplished adults, let alone a child! But Hemmings was always up to the challenge and rarely failed to supply the correct answers.
Whether or not his ability pleased his father was difficult to assess; the elder Hemmings was never less than acerbic, even at the best of times; but one such time had always stood out in Gordon’s memory. It had been a warm weekend in the autumn, when he had spent many hours in his room on a particularly obstinate problem. On finally solving the complicated simultaneous equations, and having taken the answer to his father’s study, he believed he’d seen what could only be a look of surprise, perhaps even astonishment on the other’s face if only for a moment. And Arthur H. Hemmings’ words on that occasion were as fresh now in his grown son’s mind as if spoken only yesterday:
“Aye, and you’re the clever one for sure,” he had said, his eyes gazing deep into Gordon’s. “You’re my son without a doubt, with my head for numbers and your poor mother’s warm, fey