Stokers Shadow (3 page)

“Are you suggesting that respectability in mystery fiction has died with him?” Bram asks gently.

“I am.”

“Indeed,” agrees Bram, looking from face to face, drawing them all in, with the steady rhythm of learned oration. “We live in a world of the unspeakable brought to life. Ibsen and the barbarian hordes of ‘progress' are beating down the doors of decorum in drama.”

“What of the supernatural, Bram?” asks Ellen. “That is where the public hunger is now, surely. Aren't you working on something of that nature yourself?”

“Ah that! I would rather call it ‘the unknown.' The word ‘supernatural' implies impossibility.”

Florence finds herself exclaiming in unison with Ellen. Thornley guffaws. “A mystery, Bram? Tell us.”

“The novel I am planning,” Bram continues, his audience now spellbound, “is one that penetrates the uncharted territories of the mind, our dreams and nightmares.”

“It sounds very modern, Bram,” says Ellen, beaming.

“Indeed it is.”

“Perhaps the Lyceum should follow suit, Irving,” Ellen continues. “Perhaps we should look to our own for a change.”

Florence suddenly burns with self-consciousness – Ellen has unknowingly activated a volcano in her.

“What are you suggesting?” Irving asks her calmly.

Florence fidgets with the stem of her glass, unable to look up.

“What I'm suggesting is this,” Ellen answers, determined to make her point. “That rather than constantly hiring outside hacks to adapt popular stories for major productions, we should use something our own Bram wrote.”

Florence shoots a glance at Bram, her lip trembling. She sees his face redden and his huge shoulders hunch over.

“My dear,” Irving answers, taking a casual puff of his cigar, “I did not realize you were joining our management team.”

Florence dabs her napkin over her mouth, wanting to scream. Do something, Bram! Stick up for yourself, somehow! But she knows he won't, and she is just as ashamed of herself for allowing any woman but her lobby his cause.

“Is it such a bad idea?” Ellen says, leaning towards Irving. The two actors are becoming insulated from their surroundings like a married couple arguing.

“I have endeavoured to make the Lyceum the very jewel of our profession,” says Irving, leaning back in his chair. “It must never be tarnished by untried hands no matter how well-meaning
or industrious their owner, no matter how much affection we have for him.”

“Mr. Irving is right,” says Bram.

“Bram!” hisses Florence. Suddenly she doesn't even care who hears. A fire of betrayal smoulders in her chest.

“No, my dear,” Bram continues in his soft deep voice. “I am still bound in the shallow and treacherous waters of prose. Only when I have mastered that form will I consider turning my hand to the peculiar demands of the stage.”

“Bravo!” cries Irving with a clap.

Florence can feel her skin burn like coal. Then an instinct forces her to glance at the door. There, at the entrance to the dining room, is her son, William. He is in formal school clothes, evidently just returned from his school in Winchester. He has grown so much in the last two months that she has to think for a moment before she's certain it's him. He looks like a near-replica rather than the real thing – larger, thinner and darker.

“William!” she cries, reconciling the emotions of joy with worry about what he might have just witnessed.

She flies to the door. “You're home for the holidays!”

The redundant exclamation draws attention to the awkwardness of the moment. Florence hears cutlery clink behind her and she thinks she can see a broody darkness in the boy's eye as she swoops down and takes his head into her shoulder. His bashful resistance seems stronger and more wiry than she remembers it. She tells herself it is her imagination. Boys don't notice awkward scenes. They are too busy with sports and adventure.

She pulls herself away to look at him; tears spill into her eyes. Bram has risen formally and puts out a genial hand which the boy takes looking to the floor.

“How long have you been standing there?” Florence blurts.

“Why?” William replies, looking up. He holds her steady with his grey eyes.

Now she knows for sure; he has seen the submissiveness of his father and it has disturbed him. This boy, half a stranger to her now, has peered into the imperfection of their lives. The poison of reproach and self-criticism is upon them. In some inexplicable way, she feels this is the beginning of a decline.

T
HE DINING ROOM
fades into a landscape of tired skin and shadowed lines; Florence faces her sixty-three-year-old self in the mirror again. Some agent from the other side of the world is trying to unearth all her griefs. And she feels as though she is already upon a precipice. Her own clan has long since passed, or its few surviving members are, like herself, diminished by age. She is the whimpering remnant of an army. She is a relic in an Egyptian exhibition, her bones and withered skin exposed to a leering audience and the flashes of cameras. Something has been set in motion to bring about her last defeat – that German film with its reduced vision of her husband's work; that girl from Ireland. “Was that a mistake?” she wonders. “Should I have found someone from Dublin?” This girl seems too confident. There is an almost presumptuous quality in her open, rustic face with its freckles and in the way she answers questions without the hint of trepidation.
Somehow such optimism doesn't seem entirely decent. It is as though the girl expects she can be at the centre of things. Florence knows these feelings fall short of the rational. And yet something in the house does feel alien since she came. She needs familiarity around her now and she feels as though colonies of strange insects are gnawing away at the foundations of her house, turning the values of her generation into swirling dust.

M
ARY KNOWS IT'S
gone twelve o'clock but she can't go to bed. She just sits at the dressing table which now stands directly below the window. Occasionally, she skims passages from Dracula, and the descriptions merge into the night so that the words take form, becoming at one with the breeze which teases the curtain and lifts the pages. Jonathan Harker has been asleep on the floor of a room in the castle, and three strange white-faced women – two dark, one fair – whisper over him, discussing who will kiss him first. The young man pretends to sleep and has a “wicked burning desire” to feel their lips upon his neck. The passage is written in a light, hypnotic rhythm and Mary now more than ever sees the young man as Mr. Stoker. With a warm, bittersweet sensation, Mary also recognizes that she has put herself into the position of the fair woman who swoops down and holds her lips just above his neck until Dracula himself bursts in to stop her.

Mary looks into the night, both afraid of and excited at the fluid, rushing feeling inside her and how she will describe its meaning once it settles into words. The sprinkle of stars is more intense than earlier. She believes she can make out the
plough, the same shape she has seen on the far side of her own country. She listens to the silence and slowly a noise forms from the blood rushing in her ears. A glorious, exhilarating sound like claps of thunder, except they are evenly paced and rhythmical – perhaps more like hooves galloping. She closes her eyes and lets the sensation take her over. She opens herself to the night.

The carriage rocks. The night is like crystal, silver wavelets shimmering near and far. Huge, bright stars radiate spokes in six and eight directions at once. It is like an illustration from a fairy tale, William thinks. But the carriage sways and jolts so violently, he is afraid that if it is an illustration, he will slide off the page
.

William is a child again. The huge leather seat almost swallows him and he has to look upwards to see his mother's youthful face. He feels a little sick, the carriage is plunging so hard in every direction at once. He makes a moaning sound and his mother shushes him gently
.

“Where's Father?” William tries to shout. He finds his voice is reduced to a piping shriek. “Why doesn't he save us?”

“He's too busy, William,” his mother replies. She hasn't denied they need saving. This worries William. “He's arranging a tour for Sir Henry. When he's finished he'll get us out of this.”

As though responding to William's fears, the carriage jumps crazily twice in succession and he begins to hear the ocean like thunder; mighty, earth-shattering, with a thousand whizzing and whirring noises overlaying a deep, everchanging growl of unrest. William feels that the carriage is a pinprick in hell. Then he notices that two huge sea horses are out in front pulling it along. He sees their exotically curved heads and tails and their rough skin, like embossed leather. The ocean hurls a spray over their heads, a cold dribble sinking into William's hair and oozing its way down his cheek and into the corner of his mouth. The saltiness makes him cough and William begins to see waves rising around him like small shining hills, groaning resonantly as they move
.

“I'm frightened,” William whines
.

“Don't worry, William,” his mother replies. “Your father is writing this scene. He wouldn't hurt us.”

The carriage sways and jolts, turning on its axis, unsure of its direction for a moment, then recovers
.

“You mean we're part of a story, Mother?” William asks, comforted despite the increasing ferocity of the ocean
.

“Isn't it exciting?” she says with feeling. “You should be proud of your father.”

“I am, Mother; I am proud of Father, honestly.” He shouts above the tumult. “What is this story about?”

“We are going to meet Count Dracula's carriage at the Borgo Pass,” she says, bending into his ear. “This is why it's so thrilling. It's an adventure – a fairy tale.”

“I love adventure!” William says
.

But his excitement is swallowed by fear again. The waves are suddenly peaking a hundred feet high, some falling as quickly as they rise, some holding up like misshapen oaks. The carriage is losing its bearings, turning blindly once or twice, then swirling like a cork above a whirlpool
.

“Hold on!” his mother shouts
.

William closes his eyes, sick with horror. Salt water scoots up his nose and into his mouth; his body is dragged and pulled in many directions at once, like a rag doll being quartered, sheer terror jangling through his body and mind – a train whistle a thousand times amplified …

… E
VERYTHING IS DARK
. A cymbal is crashing somewhere in his chest, reverberating through his head and body, shooting hot blood up his limbs. His arms and legs are still swaying, ducking down and rising up; he cannot distinguish one part of himself from another. He begins to hear the sound of his breathing. He can't be under water; he has escaped somehow. There is someone beside him; who is it? This is not a beach or an island. The waves have turned into sheets beneath him. Slowly he remembers his other life, the one that exists beyond the swirling storm. It returns in a patchwork – fragmentary, jigsaw details come together slowly. The woman is Maud, his wife, he remembers.

At this borderline moment, it seems ludicrous that what he has experienced will be described as a “dream” and dismissed as unimportant in a few hours. Yet he knows this is what will happen. It is happening already.

He closes his eyes and waits for his heart to calm. Hammer blows soften to a wooden door banging in the wind, which calms in turn to a dull drumming.

He looks over at the window. Pale light floods into the room. It is a full moon; he can see its perfect rim burning pale blue through the curtains which move gently in the breeze. His bedroom carries something over from the dream: the riches of night and the magic of late summer. Perhaps dreams draw in the flavour of their surroundings by osmosis. This season is like the defiant last stand of summer, the waning nights of faery revelry, when magic and imagination hold sway.

Just for a second, he sees the shadow of wings silhouetted near the pane.

William turns around in the bed, putting his feet onto the floor, checking his balance, making sure his head is no longer swaying. Once he is certain, he glances around at the outline of his wife. She is motionless. He can hear her slow breathing. He stands up and walks steadily to the window. He peels back a small section of the curtain and peers at the garden under moonlight. He sees the mature oak and cedar, the cloistering laurel bushes, and the heavy brick walls surrounding the garden. The outlines are distinct under the generous moonlight; only the colours have been replaced by a generic blue-grey. There is no sign of bird life. It must have been a swallow under the eaves, he thinks. He is about to turn back when he sees that there is a large man with a bowler hat and thick beard standing at the far end of the garden, unquestionably within its boundaries. He is quite alone, motionless, looking, apparently, at the house; his features are too obscured by the glass to tell
this for certain. William wonders if he should alert the police. But it is a half-hearted impulse held back by several things. Firstly, the man is merely standing in the open, inviting discovery, not hiding or rushing under cover towards the house. Secondly, the stranger's dress is undoubtedly respectable, not the disguise of a thief. But mostly it's the nagging perception that – through the glass, in the moonlight, from a distance – the man looks like his dead father.

William turns away for a moment, not exactly afraid, but trying to judge the implications of this last reason. He feels a rising pool of disquiet in his chest, and an odd little hammering sensation returns to his ears. Maud, still sleeping, moans. William peers through the window once more. The man has gone; only trees and bushes sway lightly in the breeze.