Stokers Shadow (11 page)

F
LORENCE NOW STARES
at the ceiling, remembering that night twenty-five years ago, wondering at a man who can be so utterly wounded by words. And why, if it was true? Why was her husband's happiness so tied to the actor's opinion of him? It is the very uncertainty that now alienates her from her dead husband's portrait. And then the leaves of her imagination twirl again, and she wonders if something else is unsettling her. Was she, as wife, not guardian of her husband's happiness? Was her duty not to battle through the fortress of his manhood into his confidence so she could soothe and share his cares? She thinks of Portia and Brutus. Would this noble woman have turned away into the night, listening to her husband's sobs and not acting?

She takes herself off to another time, another sea-monster memory but an antidote to the first.

T
HIS TIME SHE
is hovering around the shadowed hallway, butterflies whirling around her stomach. Arcs of sunlight stream through the semicircular glass above the door, resting upon the bouquets whose fumes add to the cathedral solemnity and ease Florence's agitation. Florence tries to imagine how she will greet her husband when he arrives home. She
can hear both the clomp of horse carriage and whizz of motor car engine. Every sound makes her jump a little. “Irving is dead,” she tells herself, running her hands down her dress, making sure reality seeps in so that she might better know how to behave in front of Bram. She remembers seeing herself from above – her disembodied spirit watching from the hallway ceiling. She recalls how – in viewing her nervous, guilty flitting from one corner to another to ensure the flowers were visible from the doorway – the reality of it descends on her: her husband has just suffered the loss, the one they have both spent their married lifetimes dreading. And everyone else knows it too. In the last twenty-four hours, flowers and letters have been arriving steadily, all addressed to Bram. Florence has fielded inquiries not just from newspapermen, about when Bram is expected to return from Bradford, but from the whole theatrical circle. The death notices cite Irving's estranged wife, but for the Lyceum crowd – for those who actually know them – the real widow is her husband.

Florence remembers the soft light of pain in Bram's eyes in the first weeks of his return and the alteration in his face, a claylike stiffness in the substance of his skin. And she recalls his wan kindness towards her, as though he were suddenly aware of her own disappointments, her own second place in his heart. Most of all she remembers the certainty of one feeling, a certainty she accepted quite passively, as she recalls it, that the good years were over.

Florence lets the memory go, soothed by the vision of softness in herself. And something earlier and brighter is about to
take its place, a reward perhaps, when a most unwelcome sound emanates from the ceiling – one she did not expect to hear: a determined, scraping noise which seems to start in one part of the room and ends in another.

The fingers of the breeze pull Mary's hair like a playing, reckless child. The wet gusts moisten her eyelids blurring the vision of the grey-blue clouds rolling over endless spires and rooftops. A long groan emanates from beyond everything. The clouds gather speed, glowering, regrouping and preparing for battle
.

Mary feels that her adventure has begun at last. Her tea with Mr. Stoker seemed to confirm the real connection between them. He even flirted with her a little, guiding her into the Ritz Hotel without letting her know. It was sweet really, how he expected her to be impressed by it all – all the jungle palms and the outrageously vulgar statues carved into the fireplace. But this was only half the victory of the day, Mary thinks, feeling the cool rain land in thick dollops upon her cheek and forehead. She took a chance and defied the old lady and her senseless, inconsistent rules. She broke out of her cage and returned when it suited her to find the cage still
open and no punishment planned. And now she is claiming her own adventure again, breathing in the night which Mrs. Stoker has tried to forbid to her; she is watching the clouds crawl like living membranes over the city. She is pledging herself to take part in the magic world before her
.

T
HE MORNING SUN
floods brightly in from the shining wet garden. Florence makes “shushing” noises into the cage as she pokes the monkey nuts through the thin bars. The sound calms herself, she half realizes; the parrot is indifferent. Florence is thinking of the sea, of Whitby and Cruden Bay and of summer holidays past. It feels as though a mystery has unfolded to her at last; she feels she knows why old people like the sea. It is because it tells of corruption and eternity, of things that are whole breaking up first into pieces, then specks, and then dissolving altogether under the constant roll and tumble. And it tells this story in a manner not altogether uncomforting. The horny claw of her parrot reaches out and takes the husk. It performs the task with infinite care.
How gentle the world is being to me this morning!
Florence thinks. She hears a cough from the door.

“Mrs. Davis?” She calls without turning.

“Yes, Ma'am.”

Florence looks around. Her housekeeper is standing just inside the room. “Where's Mary?” she asks.

This is the beginning of her own great enterprise, she tells herself, the one that began forming in the dark and sleepless night. “My own obituary will be one of defiance,” she told herself through the relentless memories and tumbling nightmares,
“and I will start writing it in action once I awake.” She will represent her people, her tribe, the golden generation now gone that now relies on her, its representative.

“In the scullery, Ma'am. Shall I fetch her?”

“No,” Florence replies quickly, picking up another nut from the bowl. “Wait a moment.” She has been looking forward to meeting her enemy for hours. But now suddenly she is afraid. This is one of the ants who had been chomping through the foundations of my house, she reminds herself. And I have power over her. I have the power to eradicate this threat. But she still wants to delay the moment. It is as though the insect might have grown to enormous size when she wasn't looking, developing sharp talons and yard-long steel pincers.

“Last night I heard the shifting of furniture in Mary's room again,” she merely says. She drops the nut into the parrot's cage, but the bird refuses to come this time. Am I really so afraid? Florence wonders. Is this an attempt to get Mrs. Davis to reprimand the girl for me? She thinks back to the interview with Mary a couple of days ago. She remembers the clear, blue eyes of the girl and the disingenuous answers she gave. Sincerity and simplicity can be frightening things, Florence thinks, especially when the message to be conveyed is one of subtlety and nuance. Too much honesty can border on insolence. Florence is remembering her dream and the spider-like creatures unfolding from the forest, how one of them was so much like the girl.

“I expressly told her to leave the furniture where it was,” Florence says, turning around at last, and feeling her heart skip a beat. She knows that every word she speaks now is
committing herself to something more. She is crossing the border of no return. “I believe you did the same. It seems our message has not got through.”

“I can go up and see if you like, Ma'am,” Mrs. Davis replies. “Perhaps she only shifted a chair slightly or something.” Mrs. Davis turns to leave. Florence stops her, sensing an alliance.

“No,” she says calmly, “I shall go with you.”

But she is not calm. A battle drum reverberates in her chest as she precedes Mrs. Davis, ascending the wide staircase leading to her own bedroom, then turning into the hidden landing from which the servants' staircase reaches carpetless into the realm she has rarely before entered. It seems the shushing motion of the sea is following her; she can even taste the salt air.
This is how it will be when I die,
a voice within her declares as she reaches the wobbling floorboards and thin grey carpet of the servants' quarters.
I will start doing eccentric, unpredictable things perhaps in an attempt to distract myself from what is coming. I will start fearing people and things I have never feared before. I will make errors of judgment, and my mind will fly off into tangents, making decisions and acting before I am ready to act
. A rational part of her stands off at a distance, watching her with scientific curiosity, noting all her movements, the way she stands outside Mary's room with its door that hangs open, the way she hesitates, afraid to cross the threshold with Mrs. Davis, worried, at her shoulder.

At last Florence forces herself into the room, reaches the centre and looks around like a terrapin thrown in boiling water. Mrs. Davis hovers just inside the doorway. The dressing
table is lodged just beneath the window. The mirror has been removed and is leaning against the wall to the left. A black book is spine up on the surface of the dressing table. Florence considers leaving it. She considers not reaching out to turn the book over. Her arm almost aches in her desire not to look at it. But she realizes that, in fact, she must, that it is fate, and that this is the real reason she has come here in the first place. She takes two paces, sighs, reaches out and picks up the book, the pages flopping forlornly between the hard black covers. The pathetic hope that the book might not be what she thinks it is lasts just an instant before the title, Dracula, comes into view. An aching pulse shoots up Florence's arm. She pulls the book into her chest and finds herself saying hoarsely: “Start up the fire in the morning room, will you, Mrs. Davis?”

M
ARY FEELS THE
unnatural silence of the house as she polishes the candle holder. She has thrown herself into work voluntarily, not from guilt but from the natural rhythm within her. Since the euphoria of last night, the pendulum has swung into ease and tranquility. Her actions are careful and swift and she has an unfettered desire to be productive and helpful. But just in the last few moments, something unwholesome has seeped into this comfort. Something is not right about the house; an unnatural hush seems to pervade the dust of its hallways since Mrs. Davis was called away, and that silence makes Mary feel rather hopeless and lonely. She tries to shrug off the feeling, working more vigorously at the shine, but the corners of her mouth sink downwards as though pulled by a string, and she finds herself attending more closely to the stillness.

Suddenly, there is a sharp clanging from the wall, a noise so loud in contrast to the hush around it that it at first bears no relation to the ringing of a bell. She looks up to see that she is being summoned to the morning room. She peels off her apron and exits.

T
HE DOOR IS
already half open. Mary glides into the room noiselessly, hoping not to be noticed. Mrs. Stoker sits quite happily, it seems at first, in front of the fire with a black book on her lap. But it is a vision of well-being at odds with itself. For one thing, it does not seem cool enough today for a fire. And there is something asymmetrical both in Mrs. Stoker's smile, and in the fact she should be smiling at all; Mary was bracing herself for a reprimand. And this is quite unlike any expression Mary has seen before; there is something indulgent, mischievous yet vulnerable about it. Her eyes and mouth are in constant movement like someone who is nervous but pretending not to be. Mary looks again at the book, and knows that – whatever Mrs. Stoker's expression – this is its cause.

“Come into the room, Mary,” Mrs. Stoker says in a soft voice.

Mary feels her ankle ligaments twitch and ache as she moves into the middle of the room. Mrs. Stoker is silent, watching for a moment.

“Do you remember what I told you about the furniture in your bedroom?” she asks at last.

“Yes, Ma'am,” Mary replies, turning her head to one side, trying to see the title. She is puzzled, thinking that the book
may not be Dracula, after all; Mrs. Stoker would hardly circle around such a subject. She was too much in control for that.

“Well, Mary,” Mrs. Stoker asks, “what have you got to say for yourself?” The fluid, uncertain movements of her mistress's expression sink unexpectedly into anger. Mary feels tricked.

“I don't know, Ma'am,” she replies.

“You don't know!” Mrs. Stoker raises her voice, half-heartedly it seems.

But a hammer is thumping in Mary's chest, and her body is overtaken by the kind of nerves she has seen in cats before a storm. She knows she can spin in a second into either battle or flight.

“I can't think, Ma'am,” Mary blurts, seeing Mrs. Stoker's face getting hotter, pink blotches appearing on her cheeks. It is as though she is looking into a furnace – as though her employer and the fire behind her are one and the same. She cannot imagine a punishment in keeping with this buildup. To be thrown into the street with what money she has – two shillings left – would almost be relief compared to the vague, rising fury she is already facing.

Mrs. Stoker looks down, then holds up the book with an air of triumph. She is gripping one side of the cover; the rest hangs like a battered crow caught by its wing.

Mary sees that this is Dracula after all and her respect for Mrs. Stoker's anger drains away involuntarily and with almost magical swiftness. The theatricality is ridiculous. So I'm reading your late husband's novel, Mary thinks. So what? Do you think I stole it from you? But she realizes that the library
stamp is clearly marked on the inside cover, and it's obvious how she came upon it.

“Where did you get this book?” Mrs. Stoker demands.

“From the library, Ma'am,” Mary replies, her face burning as much with indignation as with fear.

“Do you know who the author is?” Mrs. Stoker asks quietly, the orange flames dancing behind her.

“Yes, Ma'am,” Mary replies, trying hard to keep the contempt from her voice. She makes herself remember how far she is from home, how alien and threatening the city around her might become if she were quite alone.