The Purple Veil
This is a little war time adventure set in the exotic locale of a different time and place, where Bill will find the remnants of his humanity is his greatest ally.
The usual disclaimers apply, the character of Bill will be safely returned to Alan Ball, HBO and Charlaine Harris once Bill's sojourn is over.
All other characters are of my own invention.
Chapter 1
'Do you have a tuxedo, actually I think I prefer if you wear a white dinner jacket' George asked. 'Yes, I have both. Whatever you require it won't be a problem' Bill replied. 'When can you start?' 'That means I have the job?' Bill questioned, 'I can start immediately if you need.' 'Tomorrow night will do. I assume you have the proper papers Britisher?' George queried. 'Papers won't be a problem and yes, I am English, will that be a problem?' 'Not if you have papers' he replied, nodding his head as if to finish the deal. 'Now go out, enjoy yourself tonight. Tell Claude at the bar that the drinks are on the house, you are staff now and don't pay.' 'Thanks anyway but I don't drink.' Bill coolly replied. 'You Britishers and your cups of tea! Now go, I am busy' he said, ushering Bill out.
Bill walked out of the office and back towards the bar. It was getting crowded with the usual assortment of patrons that flocked to the popular night club. People of all nationalities and all walks of life generally, sooner or later, found their way to the Purple Veil Club. It was the place to go, to be seen at and to meet others with the same interests or needs, those normally being fake passports to America or anywhere in the world that was safe. With the war raging in Europe and now the Pacific, was there anywhere safe these days? For Bill, living with the constant threat of exposure, he thought it ironical that for once he was probably safer than he had been in years.
He had found the perfect cover and a regular food supply all at the same time. As the piano player at the Purple Veil for his cover, his nocturnal wonderings were less likely to be noticed and even if he was stopped after curfew, his papers were in order or at the very worst, he could resort to glamouring those French gendarmes that were overly vigilant with their questioning. All in all, life was not too bad at the moment despite the state of the world and if sitting out the war in Morocco was going to be the worst of it, then he didn't find that too great an inconvenience. He could of course always go back to the States, back home to Louisiana but he had heard that Lorena had not unusually found her way to New Orleans and so that was the last place that he wanted to be anywhere near.
So here he was, biding his time and existing. It could be a lot worse. After finally making the break with Lorena, Bill had wandered the world living as best he could. Financially he was a lot better off than most humans in that he didn't really need to work if he chose not to. He had a substantial property portfolio that he had set up in the late eighteen hundreds and was reaping the rewards of investing for the long haul. Properties bought in and around the once squalid areas of London were now, even though under the constant attacks from the Luftwaffe during the Blitz, they were still of considerable value. Eventually he had found his way back to England, there was something comforting about the place. He almost looked on it as his home, he felt its sense of history and conservatism. In some ways he supposed, it reminded him of his human life, the one that Lorena had so cruelly robbed him of. There was a certain elegance that went hand in hand with the traditions and values of the English way of life. It was only half a lie when he had told George he was British, as half of his heart he felt, belonged to England now.
Bill sighed, perhaps he was just being fanciful thinking of England like that but he did miss it, he missed the rich green fields and hills shimmering with a silver grey glow in the moonlight, he missed the cool soft misty rain on a crisp cold night and more than anything, he missed the polite gentle manners where your life was your own and people were too polite to ask questions, after all it was simply not done to delve into another persons life in polite society.
So how did Bill end up in French Morocco, Marrakech to be precise I hear you ask? As I have said, Bill had substantial properties but not just in England, he also had holdings in France amongst others and it was these properties that had taken him to Paris where, unexpectedly he had lingered longer than he had anticipated and consequently, he had ended up being not the only foreign alien to be detained by the invasion forces. Bill however, was a lot luckier than some of those unfortunates who met a quite different fate, Bill glamoured his way out of his predicament. The down side to it all was he could not get back to England no matter how hard he tried. His options, like thousands of others at that time were limited, and not being one to sit back and wait for true death to come to him, he called in a few favours that were owing to him and ended up here in Morocco.
He wasn't entirely dissatisfied with his lot in life at that particular moment in time. He now had this job and was safe and he was finding that the climate was not as unappealing as he had anticipated. He was slowly coming to appreciate the place. The medina with the hustling of the Souqs during the evenings were a mysterious pleasure to him with the small alley ways that twisted into an unfathomable maze of narrow passage ways, twisting and turning until all sense of direction was lost to all but the local inhabitants or, as in Bill's case, a night creature looking for concealment for his more nocturnal pursuits.
The smells of the spices and the heady aroma of the exotic perfumes mingled with the Moroccan wind – the Chergui or Sharq, as the wind was known, blown across the desert from the east of the Sahara where it could turn the desert into a boiling sea of sand, ferociously hot during the day and bitingly cold during the night hours, all mixing into a combination that intoxicated his delicate vampire senses and left him reeling.
He loved too the view of the Atlas Mountains with North Africa's highest peak Jebel Toubkal that he had climbed by moonlight. From his window the mountains darker shapes of shade drifted on the horizon like some silhouette of a sleeping giant, lying on the edge of the world, stretched out in sleep until the end of time. He had always been a practical creature but there was something about this place that assaulted his senses and awakened the poetic and the erotic side of his nature, it was more than the overwhelming clash of cultures, Europe meets Islam, it was the charm of the people. They cared not for the petty wars of the foreigners, they had a history of thousands of years, what care did they have for this war that was but a grain of sand in time, when for thousands of years there had been battles fought for the same reasons as always, greed and power and stupidity.
The men were men here but ah, the women, now they were intriguing to Bill. He denies that he is old fashioned, he claims to be conservative but friends, he admits that he still finds the layers of petticoats worn at the time of his human life to be of attraction and so, the Moroccan ladies with their burkahs and their glimpses of hennaed hands and faces beneath their veils, their almond shaped eyes of obsidian black demurely cast downwards, yes he has admitted to me that he has felt an arousal towards these unobtainable spectres and understands the almost fanatical male obsession with their woman. If I did not know better I would think that he was a possessive creature, a man that once he has fallen in love he will love for his whole life time or eternity, whichever comes first.
Now I hear you suddenly wondering who I am. What have I to do with Bill and why am I telling this tale? All in good time my friends, all in good time. Be content right now to know that I have come to know Bill on his little mid eastern jaunt and that my part in this tale is not yet to be told, have patience it will come with time. But now we are more concerned with Bill and his new position at the club and why, after I have told you that Bill is a creature of considerable means, why would he choose to work at all? Well friends, it comes down to this, he was lonely.
Although it had been his choice to finally rid himself of the shackles of Lorena it did not mean that he did not miss company, he had after all been by her side for many years since being turned. In fact the whole of his vampire existence up until when he gained his freedom had been spent at her beck and call. They had been inseparable, she with her obsessive desires for him on all levels and he, well as he told me himself, he had no other life. He could not go back to his family even if they were still alive, that was impossible. Lorena had held him in her powers using her sex and debauchery to corrupt his young vampire mind. Put simply, Bill had not had the confidence or will power to strike out on his own so he had stayed and endured until it became so unbearable with its suffocating decay that the true death seemed like the only relief to his tortured mind.
But just a dog that is whipped and beaten will lie down to take more time after time, one day it will be too much and it will turn upon its master and that is what happened with Bill. It wasn't just a matter of boredom or monotony, he himself has told me that half the time he was bored to death with Lorena but the other half he spent terrified, no it was more than that. He simply wanted to be part of living again or as much as he possibly could be. He wanted to live a normal life, he missed his humanity deeply and he missed the normal interaction of a human relationship. He wanted to mainstream.
Lorena had scoffed and belittled him and that was the final straw. With all the dignity that he could muster they parted and although he did not wish her harm, that was not his nature with her or anyone, he did not wish to ever see her again. So he had wandered through his greener pastures and now he lingered in the barren wastelands that time has changed little. He has often told me that it seemed some how fitting that he should be here, where time matters little as life has gone on here much the same as it always has, flowing with the wind. That is how he sees his existence now, not in hours or days or even months or years but in decades and centuries, stretching out before him like the desert, always there, never changing but constantly evolving.
It has changed him this place, this oasis. He is more philosophical now, more poetic. I tell him it is this place with its undefinable nuances that has this effect on everyone who comes here, your eyes are opened to the colours, you are forced to accept the realities of time here, and time is something that Bill has plenty of. He has many life times ahead of him, when we are gone I tell him, only his kind and the Sphinx will remember us and he laughs and holds my hand and tells me not to be sad, he will always remember me. I look at him with his lapis lazuli eyes and doubt very much if I am to be more than a grain of sand in the desert of his life and I wonder with sadness if he is speaking the truth or just saying it to be kind, but only time will tell and time is my enemy not Bill's.
But I have rushed ahead friends and told you things that you should not be hearing yet, it is not the present or the future that you wish to hear me tell you, it is the past and it is Bill's story, although I do play a part in it, so once again we will return to that night when George the Greek Cypriot, owner of the Purple Veil, first gave the 'Britisher' a job as a piano player and Bill has wandered over to stand and talk to Claude the Parisian bar tender, and talk of the crowd and the patrons and the coming of events that will change lives and alter destinies, including his own.
To be continued …..