Stokers Shadow (15 page)

A tinny piano in the corner of the lecture room sounds a predictable accompaniment, shuddering at moments of fright, as the creature with the pointed head and long fingernails now emerges from the ship's hold with a disgusting smile, rats scampering around his shoulders and spilling onto the deck. Florence wonders why people would want to submerge themselves in such degradation. Is real life not horrible enough? she berates them. Do you have to fill your eyes and ears with the darkest of fears brought to life?

Then she wonders how much of this accusation is aimed at the audience and how much at her husband. Florence's temples burn and numbness descends. She watches with just a touch of masochism as the vampire and his vermin army arrive in civilization and spread the plague. She feels that this is what has happened to her own country. Since Bram and his generation faded away, Florence and her kind have been left unprotected – exposed to the ignorance of sweeping change, to the grasping hands wishing to tear down what they do not understand, to Mary with her assumptions of equality that show through her ingenuous face, to the unfamiliar which has itself become her enemy, to the battalions of insects silently gnawing at the foundations of her house
.

The vampire creature crawls up a staircase casting a hunchback shadow on the wall. Sickness swirls around Florence's head. She feels a growing heat crackling inside her like a bonfire. The woman lies face up in her bed and the shadow of the vampire's hand reaches over her breast, closing
violently into a fist over her heart as though wringing the life out of her
.

T
HE WOMAN SCREAMS
silently and Florence finds herself mumbling an “excuse me” into the darkness and trying to rise. But something is wrong: the room sways around her, and her hands come into contact with a stranger's hard elbow and then a knee. Wooden chair legs flicker under blue light in front of her eyes and she can smell shoe leather. Florence is vaguely aware of a fuss of whispering around her. A strong hand has grasped her around the arm and furniture is being scraped backwards. In a few moments more, she is sitting on a chair with a semicircle of people around her. The flickering blue light is shocked away by startling yellow. Faces bear down on her from every direction. The nervous red-haired man that reminds her of William is twitching and pulling at his beard, his eyes now edged with worry. He is asking someone if he can get into an office with a telephone. The dowdy women watch Florence intently. One whispers to the other something about not moving her.

“Where do you live?” the taller of the women asks her, leaning forward. The words penetrate Florence's ears slowly as though through cotton wool. The girl is kind, almost motherly as nurses are supposed to be, Florence thinks. She tries to answer and manages to mumble her address on the second attempt. The dowdy woman presses her shoulder and promises, “Don't worry, we'll get you home.”

Within seconds, it seems, Florence is in the back of a car, the same woman by her side. Did I miss something? Florence
wonders. Vague images, like dreams, have passed by her. Was she really carried like Caesar down the stairs, supported at her elbows and at the back of her thighs, worried voices crisscrossing from one side to another? Through the car window she sees the fog has begun to clear, and the passing streetlights show like yellow blotches. The night is shiny and wet. Florence tells her companion that her husband is dead. She says this as though it is something that has just happened and can't think how to correct herself. The woman looks at her sympathetically. She takes Florence's hand for a second and tells her that everything will be all right. Then Florence slips away, beyond the skimming lights and rising mist, away from the ugly film which peels from her imagination like paper in the wind. Floating, she weaves between potted palm trees and oriental flowers, over tables and chairs with white tablecloths, silver cutlery and crystal decanters. Candlelight flickers in the silver and glass, spilling gold like syrup into the joyfully murmuring space. Men shine in black formal evening dress; women glisten and laugh. A turban or sari compliments the harmonious arrangement like a shimmering flower in foliage of luscious green.

A
ND AT THE
side of the banquet, on a long table, she finds her younger self. She merges into this handsome woman who sits three seats down from her husband, craning her neck his way and smiling. The lavish celebration is upon the stage. The auditorium yawns, its sweep of empty seats looking rather like a backdrop. Someone mentions this and the surrounding company agrees. Words spill out with the ease of liquid honey,
ideas embraced and passed on by the group with an unusual consciousness of shared emotions. A Union Jack hangs at the back of the stage, overlooking them all with a portrait of the new king at the centre.

A flavour of momentousness hangs in the air; the century is at last turning, a year or two too late. It needed something to happen first. The death of Victoria and the crowning of a new king provided it. Fear, nostalgia and sadness tumble in the great crashing wave of excitement and Florence, her husband, Irving, Ellen, all of them in the great Lyceum band, are at the very centre of it all.

A glass clinks and Bram stands – a handsome, upright man. She listens with gratitude to the hush and the ungrudging attention paid him. She watches his shining grey eyes with their mournful sincerity. With a profound contentment she listens to his softly spoken phrases, witnessing how he seems to describe the very fabric of their shared emotion.

“We, who have appointed ourselves guardians of that divine fountain of wisdom and inspiration that is the theatre,” he says with a gentle pause, “whether the sacred duty we have undertaken is with hammer and nails, mathematical spreadsheets, paints and canvas, costumes, or whether we are in the very front lines with the footlights glaring upon grease-painted faces …” he gazes at his audience fixing them as though through some quiet hypnosis, “all of us understand in some small way the profound joy of service and devotion to a thing far greater than ourselves. All of us feel that vital thrill of being part of a great performance which is the result of many individual parts coming together selflessly.”

There is a murmur of approval from the audience. Florence feels the warmth of happiness but then slips away, falling from her seat once more and sinking upon her back. The silver and crystal have faded and she is lying in some dark and nameless place.

The bed jolts beneath her, clanking the headboard. She knows straightaway that her husband is next to her, crying. Her eyes are closed fast, her limbs unmoveable as lead. She knows Bram is long gone and that she cannot break through the wall of time. But this time, while the noise and rocking movement continue to assail her, it all suddenly makes sense; the tears are simply the other side of devotion, a relationship as natural and inevitable as the sky and earth joining at the horizon. It is the cost of love. All devotion has a price – the thorn piercing the scalp, the scourge on the back. The formula is written in the very air. Why did it ever seem unnatural? she asks herself in the enclosed blackness. And a new fear burns through her body that she herself has unpaid debts.

A fresh sensation merges with the rocking beneath her. Something wet is pressing itself into her forehead. Her vision returns and she sees a hovering dove descend at intervals, pushing its wet wings onto the skin below her hairline. The dove repeats this movement to the rhythm of her husband's sobs which now begin to fade. Heat rises like glowing coals from within her and through the wavering light, beyond the hovering dove, she sees her husband step out of his portrait and stand over the side of the bed. Through her confusion she scans the lines on his face; they are exactly as they appeared in
the painting, except in three dimensions. She knows this cannot be a dream, the details are too precise. She tries to moan out loud that this is the case. She urgently needs to tell Bram she knows he is real. She yearns for an acknowledged connection to weigh against the great columns of sadness. But the words will not form.

A stethoscope appears around his neck. Has he become a doctor? Florence asks herself, wondering what else she might have forgotten. Bram reaches out as the dove flies away and touches her forehead with the tips of his fingers. And as she feels the soft flesh against hers, a myriad of golden wavelets begin to wash over her, like the essence of candlelight from the Coronation dinner. She drinks in the soothing waves which seem to taste like syrup-wine.

And in a moment she is running, lifting up her long skirts so they do not drag upon the stairs as she ascends. Above her a wide doorway radiates generous undulating shafts of light. She swoops up quickly and flies through into a handsome, spacious room which is painted white and lemon yellow. A youthful, ruddy Bram in the centre spins to greet her. It has been so long since she has seen him look so dashing, she has to catch her breath for a second.

“These are the rooms I was talking to you about,” he says calmly, smiling at her. Now Florence remembers where she is, in their Chelsea home overlooking the Thames.

“Where's the view?” she finds herself demanding. Her voice, like her movements, is almost girlishly young, in a whirl of vibrant excitement. She feels her cheeks burn with the energy.

Bram's grey eyes twinkle amusement. She has forgotten how ardent he once seemed. “Curiously enough, my Florrie,” he answers slowly, “from the balcony.”

They both rush towards the rippling white-veil curtains hanging Turkish-fashion over the French windows. In a second they are looking over the balcony and upon the rolling, crystalgreen water of the Thames in June sunlight. Barges, sailboats, cargo and passenger steamers hardly move, and the panorama of church steeples, rooftops, gardens and smoking turrets seems like a great tapestry.

“Do we dare take it?” Florence gasps the question.

“Florrie,” Bram replies in rounded, comforting tones. “We can dare to take the world. Spices from India, tea from China, sugar from Jamaica.” He points out the vessels one by one, but Florence follows his words, rather than the information, excited by his confidence, protected by his masculinity. “Florrie, we have arrived,” he announces taking her arm. A new thrill runs through Florence. She is under the wing of a great eagle who means to take her through Arabian Nights adventures, into palaces of kings and lands of legends. “Before I finish,” he continues, “the whole globe will have heard of Henry Irving and the Lyceum.”

Florence is speechless for a moment. She gulps and feels the tears spill into her eyes. Something has overcome her – an emotion so strong it cannot be named until it begins to pass. It has come from all directions at once – from within her own thumping heart, from the blue sky and wisps of clouds, from the moving water and from the breeze wafting through her hair, touching the skin of her cheek and neck. Then she knows
it. She has just felt the supreme, unassailable power of youth and the infinite possibilities it holds.

“I will never forget this moment,” she says hoarsely. And she is aware that she stands on the very pinnacle of her life. She pauses, collects the strands of her emotions and continues more solemnly, realizing that she is etching words upon time that will not be erased. “I will never allow my thoughts to spiral into dullness, or let this feeling desert me even for a week.” She feels the gentle pressure of Bram's arm squeezing hers in approval.

“You will be the bride of Lyceum,” he says with infinite gentleness and respect. She can feel the vibrations of his voice tingling her arm. “Your happiness will be our genie, our lantern carrying us all through difficult times. We are all in our way serving the same great cause.”

Florence feels a new joy rise in her chest, a sensation of duty and mission of which she has only ever read – something that until now had always seemed too elusive, too abstract for her sex. She breathes deeply. “I hereby promise to play my role,” she says, smiling at the rolling waters, feeling benign gods in the crystal sunlight and the perpetually changing breeze. “I will never be dull. At this moment, I can never even imagine being sad or growing old.” She finds herself laughing and leaning against Bram's strong shoulder. “I don't believe it is even possible.”

“For you, my dear Florrie,” Bram replies, “I can well believe it is not.”

M
ARY BRINGS THE
white cloth down to Mrs. Stoker's forehead again, but this time the old lady pushes it away. Her eyes
stare at the ceiling as though transfixed. Mary cannot even imagine how she will survive. The colours of her skin are so unnatural, a kind of purple showing under her eyes. She seems so far from either sleep or ordinary waking. The doctor rattles away his stethoscope at the foot of the bed. Mary listens intently to his hushed tones as he talks to Mrs. Davis. “The temperature is our immediate concern. We must continue with the cool water and hope the fever burns itself out.” His quiet, even voice only accentuates alarm; it is obvious there are decades of practice behind his manner. It is there for a reason and the reason is grave.

Mrs. Davis slips out of the room to see the doctor out. If he is going, Mary thinks, it cannot be so serious, surely. But then she looks at Mrs. Stoker's open eyes; they are as senseless to her surroundings as those of a fish at market. The hope fades. Mary feels that the very foundations of her life are being pulled from under her. She can almost feel the floorboards shake and wobble. It did not occur to her that Mrs. Stoker would die. Twin spears of guilt and fear twist inside her at the thought. How might I have prevented this? she thinks. And what will happen to me now? She sees herself with her packing case disappearing into the London fog, stray dogs following her progress, a shilling in her purse.

Of course Mr. Stoker will want to help her, and so will Mrs. Davis. But he will be caught up with grief and Mrs. Davis will be in need of help herself. Her own plight will seem less deserving among those with less selfish concerns. Death is too sacred and too precious. They will all be guiding Mrs. Stoker to heaven, touching her off on the silent barge. Mary's worries will tumble to the bottom of the pile.