A Christmas Homecoming (4 page)

Joshua was smiling. “Sorry,” he said gently. “Have I landed you with a wretched Christmas?”

“Probably,” she replied. “But listening to Eliza Netheridge in that awful drawing room yesterday evening, I thought of my mother-in-law, and blessed your name for having rescued me from her.”

“Oh, Grandmama.” He rolled his eyes. “I was just doing my impersonation of St. George, rescuing the maiden from the dragon. Was she pretty awful, old Mrs. Netheridge? I believe she died over ten years ago.”

“She’s still around in spirit,” Caroline said, sitting
up in bed and pushing her long hair out of the way. It was soft and shining, and still mostly dark brown. She rinsed it in a solution of cold tea and iron filings, but she would rather that Joshua did not know that. “She designed the décor, and it has remained untouched since then,” she went on.

“It must have been redecorated in ten years!” he protested.

“Certainly, but not changed.” She looked at him. “It’s awful, isn’t it!”

“Ghastly.” He leaned forward and kissed her softly, intimately, then stood up. “After breakfast I have to read through this play again. I don’t know what on earth I’m going to do with it to make it work. It’s bad on the page, and I’ve an awful fear it’s going to be even worse when it’s read.”

“We have a week to work on it.” She pushed the bedclothes away and swung her feet out. “Let’s at least enjoy breakfast. I shall probably eat far too much while I’m here. Judging from dinner last night, they have an excellent cook, and nothing in the kitchen is my responsibility. That in itself makes it all taste better.”

The meal lived up to her every expectation. The
sideboard groaned under the weight of chafing dishes of kidneys; bacon; sausages; potatoes; and eggs boiled, scrambled, poached, and fried. There was porridge for those who wished it, and racks of toast with butter, jam, and marmalade, and pots of tea. It was only the temper of the guests that was sour.

Vincent barely spoke, but that was usual for him in the mornings. Lydia was cheerful, but for some reason, this irritated Mercy.

“I don’t know why we are bothering,” she said for the third time. “Look at the weather. Nobody’s going to be able to come for the performance, even if they wish to.” She reached for the marmalade.

“Why wouldn’t they wish to?” Lydia asked with exaggerated innocence. “
Dracula
is all the rage in London. Everyone is reading it, if only to not be left out. It will be enormous fun. Don’t you want to be Mina, and fall into the arms of the vampire, become one of the ‘children of the night’?” She sipped her tea delicately.

Mercy glared at her. “All I can say is thank God you die near the beginning!”

“But then I am ‘undead’!” Lydia said with a grin. “It isn’t until much later that I can go into the audience
and watch all the rest of you without having to worry about remembering any more lines.”

“That’s if we can make it workable in the first place,” James said darkly. He had taken a liberal breakfast and was still eating it: kidneys, bacon, eggs, and sausage.

“We must,” Joshua reminded them. “A good deal of our company’s survival next year depends on it. And I suggest that next time you find a line difficult or an entry or exit clumsy, you remember that, and try a bit harder to make do.”

At that moment, Alice appeared. The conversation instantly became polite and trivial.

alf an hour later they were assembled in the theater with copies of the script, ready to begin. Joshua was on the stage both to direct and to play the part of Dracula.

Caroline watched as they began a trifle awkwardly. In the original story, there had been several more characters. Principal among them were Doctor seward, the
father of Mina, the female lead, who was played by Mercy; and Renfield, the unfortunate man who became the creature of Dracula, obsessed with eating flies and small rodents in the belief that their life force was necessary to his own survival. Alice had adapted the story so that Seward could be cut entirely and Renfield only referred to in passing.

Joshua understood and approved the reduction in the number of characters. They only had so many cast members, and an unfamiliar audience would find too many people confusing to identify and remember. They were left with only Van Helsing, the hero; Jonathan Harker, who was in love with Mina and yet helpless to save her; Mina; Lucy, who was Mina’s friend and Dracula’s first victim; and of course Dracula himself. Alice had kept Whitby as the setting, for the most obvious of reasons.

But even Caroline, who now knew the story better than she had any real wish to, found the reading difficult to follow.

For the first reading there was no movement, although they were all reasonably familiar with their lines. As it had been adapted, Harker was telling Mina,
his fiancée, about Renfield’s travels to Transylvania, and how they had subsequently resulted in his present tragic condition and his confinement to the insane asylum. She was listening, appalled and sympathetic.

Caroline had not watched many rehearsals before. Were they always so wooden? James was reading Harker as if he were half-asleep. Was he saving his emotion for later, when there were actions to go with the words?

She turned to Alice sitting beside her and saw the tension in her face, the tightness where she was biting her lip. Did the words sound stilted to her also? Was she embarrassed by her adaptation now?

On the stage, Mercy responded. Her voice rose and fell with emotion that sounded totally artificial, ridiculous when coupled with the banal words she was saying.

Caroline began to feel more and more uncomfortable. She found herself fidgeting in her seat, unable to relax. She knew Joshua well enough to see his frustration in the way he moved and hear it in his voice when he told James to read his lines again.

At that, Mercy came to her husband’s defense instantly.

“There’s no point yet,” she said sharply. “We’ll only change it. We’ll have to. Nobody speaks like this.”

A flicker of anger crossed Joshua’s face. Caroline could see the difficulty with which he controlled his tongue.

“Most dialogue sounds inappropriate if you read it like a railway timetable,” he replied. “You’re describing how a normal, decent man has changed into an insane, disgusting creature. We are supposed to be giving the audience a taste of the horror to come.”

“All so we can be appalled when you appear,” Vincent said drily. “Rather an old trick, don’t you think?”

“Well there’s not much point in Van Helsing’s battle against Dracula if Dracula isn’t appalling, is there?” Joshua shot back. “I won’t ask you if you want to direct, because I know perfectly well that you do. But right now it’s my responsibility, so concentrate on your own job.”

Vincent shrugged elaborately and sighed.

“Move on to the next scene,” Joshua instructed, his voice strained.

It was no better than the first. It was the initial appearance of Dracula, washing ashore in a violent storm
that had wrecked his ship and sent his coffin to the shore. There was no possible way of showing all this on the stage, however, so it had to be recounted by one of the actors. Thus it had been built into Lydia’s part as Lucy Westenra. But when she spoke the lines, she too sounded as if she barely believed what she was saying, though there was no sharp disdain in her voice as there had been in Mercy’s.

“For heaven’s sake, Lydia, act it!” Mercy said furiously. “How do we know if it works or not if you don’t try?”

Lydia read it again, with more emotion, and even Caroline had to admit it sounded better. She glanced at Alice Netheridge and saw some of the embarrassment slip away from her expression.

The addition of Dracula’s presence improved the drama considerably. The next couple of scenes were quite good. Until Van Helsing made his appearance.

“I don’t think that’s strong enough,” Vincent commented. “He sounds as if he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“He doesn’t, yet,” Joshua argued.

“Yes, he does,” Vincent answered immediately. “He’s
a genius and he’s made a life study of vampires. He has to be powerful. After all, he destroys Dracula, the greatest vampire of all.” He sat back a little in his chair, smiling.

“That’s at the end,” Joshua said with markedly less patience. “If we know all that about him at the beginning, then there is no story.”

“Everybody knows the end anyway,” Vincent argued. “Most people have either read the damn book or they’ve heard people talking about it.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “Vincent, you’re an actor. Pretend you don’t know, for heaven’s sake, or we’ll be here all day and go nowhere.”

Vincent turned to her. “And where exactly is it that you think we are going, my dear?” he asked sarcastically.

“I have no idea,” Lydia replied. “Any more than you have.”

“I know I’m going quietly mad!” Mercy put in very distinctly.

“That won’t be a very long journey,” Caroline muttered. She was embarrassed when she realized Alice had heard her, until she saw the sudden smile on Alice’s face.

“You said ‘quietly,’ ” Joshua said, looking at Mercy. “Make that a promise, will you!”

She glared at him.

“Page thirty-nine, from the top,” Joshua resumed. “Van Helsing to Harker.”

“We really need another character here,” Vincent pointed out. “It doesn’t make sense like this. Harker’s an idiot, completely ineffectual. Van Helsing would neither turn to him nor try to use him.”

“He’ll use what he has,” Joshua snapped. “And at the moment he has no one else. Just read it; we’ll make what amendments we need to later.”

With elaborate patience Vincent did as he was told. It sounded ridiculous, just as he had intended it to.

hey stopped at lunchtime, after having read through the entire hour-long script twice. The meal was awkward, everyone concentrating on their food, which again was plentiful and excellent. They spoke of trivial things: places they had traveled to at one time or another; books they had read; even the weather—although that
last subject became less trivial as the wind increased and the snow that had been falling intermittently became heavier. It was clear from the almost horizontal angle at which it was streaming past the windows, and the thrashing of the trees beyond, that the storm was increasing in violence.