Countess Dracula (6 page)

She thought of the tales she had heard when young. Stories told by her mother to fill out the dark hours between food and sleep. She remembered in particular the countess who had shared her first name, Elizabeth Báthory, the woman who had thrilled and terrified people for generations after her with the hundreds of deaths attributed to her. She had supposedly bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth, a female counterpart to Vlad the Impaler. A beast, a fiend, a human vampire.

But surely there could be no truth in it? Oh, certainly the woman had ordered the deaths of hundreds of young girls, and maybe she had even allowed herself the luxury of bathing in their still-warm blood. But there could be no real effect, could there?

Then how do you explain what you can see with your own eyes?
said a voice inside her head.
Are you so changed by this new America, this land of reason and science, that you deny the truth of what you can see before you?

Elizabeth rubbed at the renewed cheek, firm and sculpted. It could lie to her fingers no more than it could to her eyes: it was the cheek of a much younger woman.

Her heart pounding, her hands automatically reached for one of her tranquillisers. She stopped herself. When had she become so afraid of strong emotion that she felt the need to medicate against it? Let her heart pound. Let her breathing quicken. She was looking at a miracle and what other response could there be to such a thing?

Then came the thought that triggered everything that came after, the thought that sealed not only her fate but also those of the innocents that would follow. A simple thought. A logical thought. A terrible, terrible thought.

But what about the rest of me?

Patience lived up to her name. She had cleaned the maid’s wounds and the doctor had visited, dismissing the matter as of no great concern (as much because of the social status of the patient as the relative mildness of her wounds). He had put a few stitches in her cheek but was confident that it would heal cleanly.

‘It’s hardly the end of the world,’ he had said, taking his leave. ‘She should just get back to work.’

A sentiment with which Patience wholly sympathised. If only to shut the stupid girl up.

‘I’ve never seen anyone so angry,’ the girl said, still sitting in the dining room as if waiting for further attention. ‘I thought she was going to kill me. The look in her eyes …’

‘She and the master had been fighting,’ Patience explained for the umpteenth time. ‘You know how couples get when they don’t see eye to eye.’

‘Well,’ the girl replied, ‘I suppose, not that I’ve got a husband …’

Patience was not in the least surprised.

‘Daddy says there’s time enough for all of that later,’ the maid continued, ‘when I’m older and want to settle down.’ She looked up at her nurse. ‘Not that I’m exactly unsettled now, I’m always at this house or at home. You know what it’s like.’

Patience lived in so could only envy the girl her occasional escape. Nonetheless she nodded.

‘Of course, if I had money …’ And with that the girl’s face changed and Patience’s heart sank. It was to be like this, was it? The maid’s getting caught in the crossfire between her employers was not a misfortune, it was an opportunity. All these kids were the same, always looking for a short cut.

‘Patience?’

The woman looked up to see her employer in the doorway. Elizabeth still looked dishevelled: her hair, normally worn up, had been allowed to hang down, unbrushed, over half of her face. She looks like a demon, Patience thought, in uncharacteristically dramatic terms.

‘Yes, ma’am?’

‘How is the girl?’ Elizabeth entered and, on seeing the maid sitting in one of her dining chairs, her face lit up with what Patience would have called concern had she seen the expression on the face of any person other than her mistress. ‘There you are!’

The maid shrank back, unable to stop herself cowering slightly.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Elizabeth continued, ‘I have been beside myself with worry. To think how close I came to … It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘No, ma’am,’ the maid said, glad they had at least one thing they could agree on.

‘You must think terribly of me,’ Elizabeth continued. Patience tensed at that, knowing full well that if there was one sure-fire way to ignite the anger of her employer it would be agreement.

‘Of course not, ma’am,’ the maid replied. ‘You were just angry. I know that. You didn’t mean to hurt me.’

‘Indeed not – in fact, we must make sure we take good care of you.’ Elizabeth bent down and stroked the girl’s face, running the pad of her thumb just below the cut on her cheek. The girl winced slightly but it wasn’t enough to take her mind off the promise of what her employer had said.

‘I’m sure you will,’ she said. Patience was dismayed at the bare greed she saw on the girl’s face. She wasn’t even bothering to hide it. ‘I know you and the master are fine Christian folk.’

Elizabeth laughed at that – how could she not? ‘I don’t know about that,’ she said, ‘but we will certainly make sure you don’t feel badly treated. Have you plans for the evening?’

This question wrong-footed the girl, so unexpected was it. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘In fact, I was just saying to Miss Patience that I never really do much outside work.’

‘Well, tonight you shall,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You will be my guest here and we will see if we can’t give you a night to remember.’

The maid was actually concerned by the idea of that. ‘Oh, I couldn’t impose!’

‘Nonsense! And it’s no imposition. You will stay the night with us and we will see what we can do to entertain you. Besides, we need to talk about what manner of compensation we need to give you.’

And again, greed obscured any more rational thought. ‘I don’t know what to say …’

If I were you
, Patience suddenly thought,
I would say no
.

But the maid was not her. ‘I can’t believe it!’ Embarrassment got in the way again. ‘But I haven’t got anything to wear … Oh Lord … it wouldn’t be right. I’m only staff … I shouldn’t be …’

Elizabeth took both the girl’s hands. ‘Nonsense. What’s the difference, really? Why, only a few years ago I was no more important than you.’

Patience had her job cut out not to let her expression respond to that somewhat backhanded compliment. Graciousness had never come easily to the mistress, nor humility. Patience was quite sure that Elizabeth Sasdy had never considered herself unimportant.

‘Why don’t you come with me and we’ll see what we can find for you?’

Elizabeth lifted the maid to her feet and, starry-eyed, the girl looked back at Patience as if she was seeking permission. What right had she to offer an opinion either way? Patience had no doubt that nothing good could come from the mistress’s mood but she could hardly say so.

She just nodded and watched the girl being led away.

*

‘We could go out,’ Elizabeth was saying, though Georgina, the maid, barely heard her. She simply couldn’t believe what was happening to her and everything had taken on the distant, dislocated feeling of a dream.

‘Have drinks somewhere, then back here for dinner, something special … something fabulous!’

‘There’s really no need,’ Georgina insisted, utterly overwhelmed.

‘Oh, bless you.’ Elizabeth pulled her close and kissed her on her unwounded cheek. ‘There’s every need. I’ve treated you terribly and I simply couldn’t live with myself unless I made it up to you.’

She led the girl into her dressing room, a place bigger even than her bedroom, a mirror-lined chamber of concealed wardrobes. The outfits contained therein formed a museum of her public appearances: gowns and frocks, skirts and blouses, many of them worn only once and then filed away as a memento.

‘You’re a little more petite than me,’ Elizabeth noted, ‘but I’m sure we can find something that will work.’

Georgina could barely hold still in the room, shifting awkwardly from one foot to another as she turned around and around, being chased by her ever-present reflection. She was an animal utterly removed from her environment and with no idea how to adapt. ‘I’m sure nothing here would be right. I wouldn’t know how to wear it.’

‘Oh darling, any woman can wear anything. Now, get rid of that uniform and let’s see what we can find.’

‘Get rid …?’

‘Don’t be shy – you can hardly wear a frock over the top of it, can you? We’re all girls together.’

‘I suppose so.’ Reluctantly, Georgina reached behind her and began to untie her pinny.

‘Besides,’ continued Elizabeth, ‘today that is no longer who you are: no more service, no more uniform, just the beauty beneath it.’

‘Beauty?’ Georgina looked at her reflection and scowled at what she saw. ‘I’m no beauty.’

Elizabeth had to agree as the girl unzipped her black dress to expose a pale, thin body underneath.
Just look at this creature
, she thought,
with her hairy arms and legs, her jutting knees and flat chest, her mismatched underwear and her skin like curdled milk. What loss was such a thing? What a small price to pay in a world where beauty was everything
.

Out loud Elizabeth was the consummate actress: ‘Nonsense! The waif look is the next thing. I’m so jealous! Look at my pudgy body compared to yours, so lean and toned.’

‘Toned?’

‘Fit, supple.’

‘Oh, that’ll be the sweeping, I suppose. It really takes it out of you, especially on the hot days.’

‘I just bet it does.’

Elizabeth pulled out a red satin dress. She had worn it for the premiere of
Starlings
, a Southern Gothic where she had played an abandoned orphan looking after younger children in the cruel home where they had been abandoned. She had lost weight for the role: the director had been determined to capture the look of a young woman who had survived off little but oats and raw potatoes for most of her life. She had hated the movie but the critics hadn’t and that had been the important thing. What she saw as unnecessary torture had been lauded as ‘dazzling commitment to the role’. Fabio had been quick to release to the papers how she had been eager to experience the discomfort of the many real-life unfortunates who grew up in a state of abuse and fear, and hinted that a portion of her fee was going to a local orphanage. It hadn’t, naturally – Elizabeth would never have stood for such waste. But the press had done her no end of favours, even when she had been photographed gorging herself at the premiere party, finally able to stuff herself with platters of cold meats and creamed potatoes.

‘Try this,’ she suggested, holding the frock out to Georgina.

‘Oh that’s just …’ The words wouldn’t come easily to the girl. ‘I mean … it’s
wonderful
.’

‘I think you’ll look fabulous in it,’ Elizabeth assured her. ‘If only your boyfriend could see you in it, eh?’

‘I haven’t got a boyfriend,’ Georgina admitted. She looked uncomfortable at the admission though not so much that she wasn’t willing to go further. ‘There was one boy, I thought he loved me … he wanted … well, you know what boys always want. But then I never saw him for dust.’

‘Oh, men are such pigs,’ said Elizabeth, ‘though there’s nothing wrong with a bit of pleasure from time to time! God wouldn’t have given us our bodies unless he wanted us to use them, now would he?’

‘I suppose not. I never really thought about it like that.’ The girl looked at Elizabeth, clearly weighing up whether to say any more. ‘I gave him what he wanted,’ she eventually confessed, ‘and it was nice, I suppose, though he obviously didn’t think so as he never hung around for more.’

Interesting
, thought Elizabeth.
Not a virgin, then. Thank God for that. I mean, where the hell do you get virgins in this town?

Georgina struggled into the dress with Elizabeth’s help, lost in the soft fabric and the awkwardly placed buttons.

‘I never …’ The girl looked at herself in the mirror and actually started to cry. ‘I’ve never worn such a thing, never looked so …’

She looks like a child playing at dress-up
, thought Elizabeth,
utterly at odds with the clothes, like a head being cut from one photo and stuck on another
.

‘Now we need to do your hair and make-up,’ she told the girl, ‘to make you perfect.’

‘Perfect,’ Georgina repeated. ‘I never thought I could be perfect.’

Neither did I
, Elizabeth agreed.
Not again … but with your help
…

Nayland spent a little while in the screening room, calming himself down with some Mack Sennett shorts. If he could have stayed down there for ever he would certainly have done so. Let them all go about their stupid games without him. Here he had the best of them all, the perfect versions, the ones who would never let you down as long as the film still rolled and the light still burned.

But rise up he must, and if he did so then let him absorb as much good humour from the foolish antics of Billy Bevan, Ben Turpin and the lovely Alice Day as he could.

The house was quiet when he ascended into the entrance hall, with nothing but a slightly perturbed look on Patience’s face to alert him that all might not be well.

‘Something wrong?’ he asked.

‘Nothing, I’m sure, sir,’ she replied. ‘There was a slight accident with one of the maids. The mistress was –’ Nayland saw her struggle for the least emotive words she could find, ‘– agitated, and she threw some glassware.’

‘Indeed she did, at me.’

‘It hit a maid and I’m afraid she was hurt.’

‘Badly?’

‘The doctor says not.’ There was a discernible and weighted pause. ‘Though the mistress seems determined to make it up to the girl. I believe she said something about taking her out dancing.’

And now Nayland could see why Patience was concerned. Elizabeth was not a gracious woman.

‘Dancing?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then everything sounds fine, doesn’t it?’ He made it clear that there was only one correct answer.

‘Absolutely, sir. I shall go about my duties.’

‘Indeed.’

Nayland went upstairs, dreading what he might find.

‘Let’s make ourselves beautiful!’ said Elizabeth.