Stokers Shadow (5 page)

Florence snags the bottom of her dress. She frees herself with a tug that rips the material.

“This is one of your husband's stories,” the voice says. “You're on your own. You must hold them all back.”

An owl hoots and some other creature scurries around close to her feet. Florence snags her sleeve. Without warning, the forest dims into twilight.

“Hold who back?” Florence demands.

“Anarchists. The Empire is in danger.”

Deep blue darkens to navy. It is night.

A low, long howl emanates from somewhere far off. A winged creature shoots from one branch to another above her head. A whiplash movement and hiss is followed by stinging pain on her ankle. Florence screams and falls to her knees, holding the skin where she has been bitten.

“Bram!” she cries missing his warm protectiveness. “Where are you?”

“What's the matter?” replies the unknown voice that she now begins to dislike.

“I've been bitten by a snake.”

“Don't worry. It's in the script.”

“I want my husband!” cries Florence.

“Don't you remember?” the voice replies neutrally. “He's dead.”

“No!” shouts Florence. Hot tears spill onto her cheeks as the bright illusion peels away. She rocks backwards and forwards in the darkness, cradling her ankle.

As her rocking dies down, the noise of a vibrating engine emanates from somewhere behind her, its steady rhythm increasing in volume and arching into something primal and hungry. Florence spins around. She sees nothing but blackness through the gauze of cracked bark and sprigs. The noise dies away.

Then she spins around again. A squawk – shrill like a train whistle – has pierced the silence, this time from her other side. And now a face comes into view. The face is youthful, androgynous and white like a Japanese minstrel under footlights. Its
lips are luminous scarlet and there is a hideous lack of expression; its stare aims beyond rather than at Florence.

Nothing happens at first. And then a branch close to the white face seems to unfold magically in the darkness as though held on wires. Puppet-like, the face moves closer. And Florence realizes it is not a branch, but a limb of the strange creature before her.

Other limbs – green, brown and irregular – disassociate themselves from the forest and other white faces appear, first two, then four, then six or seven, all with the same hollow stare and shining lips. The faces move toward her as the spider limbs multiply, padding through the darkness with a strange, disjointed tread. Florence whimpers and lies down in the undergrowth, feeling wet leaves seep through her garment. She cannot bear one of the creatures to touch her but knows that each second brings that certainty closer. One of the faces hangs moonlike over her and she cannot help but see its dreadful features. They are a ghastly parody of her new companion, Mary. Another face appears over its shoulder. Its glistening paleness mocks her own son, William. She thinks of calling for help but she realizes it is useless; the very breath of the spider people plays upon her cheek and neck as she closes her eyes.

“Mother, wake up,” one of them says. She tries to push the creatures away with her palms, but her hands do not make contact. Slowly her eyes open to a very different reality. The smooth walls of her morning room replace the hollow darkness of the forest. Mary and William stand over her, the latter stooping and looking concerned.

“Mother. You're dreaming,” William says.

Florence's parrot scrapes on its perch over her head and squawks. The sound is like the train whistle in the forest. Florence focuses hard, collecting her dignity like heavy armour. Reality is still swaying to a standstill and she knows she cannot yet tell truth from dream.

“Mary,” Florence says, mustering an instructive tone.

“Yes Ma'am,” the girl answers.

“Mail the letters in the hall, will you?”

“Yes Ma'am.”

Mary leaves and closes the door behind her. Florence tries to sit up straight in her chair. She touches her cheek with a fingertip to make sure no tears spilled outside her dream. Satisfied, she looks her son in the face.

“So, William. You've come to see me.”

“Yes, Mother. I did what you asked me.” William is looking at her curiously, and Florence finds herself resenting it.

“What did they say?” she asks.

“They said you have to make a decision.”

“What manner of decision?”

William delays answering. Does he enjoy seeing her at a disadvantage?

“Well?” she demands.

William sighs. “A decision about whether you want to try and collect royalties from the Prana film company or whether you want to prevent the film from being shown.”

Cruelty rises in her chest like molten iron. “Is that all the progress you have made?” she says.

William pauses and stands up straight. “Yes, Mother,” he says with a sigh. “That's all the progress I have made.” He
turns, crosses to the window and looks out at the lawn. “Sorry I haven't brought you the cheque for back royalties together with a note of apology from the German Chancellor himself.”

“There's no need to raise your voice at me, William,” Florence replies gently. She finds herself gaining composure from her son's discomfort.

“I do apologize, Mother,” he says turning. His face is slightly red. “It has not been an easy day.”

“So I see,” Florence replies.

William slips onto the oriental chair under the parrot.

“I want to help you in this, Mother, but I need your cooperation.” He holds out his hands as though wanting to offer something.

Florence takes a deep breath. “If it's an answer one way or the other that they want,” she says looking down, “I want it destroyed.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Florence looks at William silently.

“Destroyed?” he repeats at last.

“That's what I said, William.”

“The film?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why?”

She finds herself revelling in the moment. She has found an oasis of power. She will splash joyfully in its warm waters.

“No,” she says, “You may not.”

“No?” he repeats again.

“That's right, William. No.”

William smacks his lips and looks to the carpet. She watches him coldly.

“You want me to act on your behalf to throw away the chance of earning possibly large sums of money – “

“That's right.”

“ – and you won't tell me why?”

“Correct. It is my prerogative and I have decided to guard it.”

She grips the chair arm wondering if, after all, she has just dug herself into a corner. This wasn't really a decision so much as an impulse. Her son is staring at her with tired and bewildered eyes. “I would like you to feel the way I do,” she finds herself continuing. “That would be nice. But since you clearly do not, I would like to keep my explanations to myself.”

“Ah!” William exclaims, smiling rather bitterly, Florence thinks.

“What?” Florence demands. William gets to his feet again and claps his hands together.

“It's a punishment! Of course.”

“Don't be absurd!” Florence fires too quickly. She feels her face burning, about to give her away. “Why would I want to punish you?”

William stares back too confidently all of a sudden, almost insolently, in fact. Florence is suddenly afraid of all the answers he could give.

“Because I wasn't as horrified about the existence of this film as you were.”

Florence stands. “William,” she says, “I am a widow.”

Florence turns and walks to the mantelpiece. William has gone silent although she can hear him breathing, thinking. She has just used the mightiest weapon in her whole arsenal and she knows he cannot argue. Florence picks up a display box housing a medal and makes as if to alter its position. The medal is round and silver and nestles in ruffs of silk. It was earned by her husband when he threw himself into the filthy Thames to save some suicidal wretch who, in any case, perished. It was as foolish and dangerous an act as Bram ever performed. But she kept the medal anyway. It symbolizes not only her husband but something about his generation – the full-blooded bravery to which it aspired. She places it back upon the mantelpiece wondering why she has chosen it now. Perhaps she wants her son to see it as a judgment.

Florence turns to William to see him totally wilted. When he answers, it's in a feeble voice.

“Mother, I know you're a widow. That is precisely why you must supplement your situation when a legitimate chance presents itself. Like this film.”

“No, William, that is precisely why I have to guard a more precious honour and integrity than mere money.”

“How would you not be doing so by claiming royalties?” he asks quietly.

“William, do I really have to explain it to you?”

“Yes, Mother,” he replies, “I think you do.”

Florence returns to her seat.

“I am too old to join the suffragettes.”

“Pardon?”

“I cannot chain myself to a public building when I feel a principle has been violated. My options in life are limited. My powers are curtailed.”

William looks at her dubiously for a second but then his head bows.

“But when foreigners distort my husband's words for their own ends, I will use every means I have at my disposal to put an end to their treachery.”

William stares at her, pink-faced and unhappy. He nods again.

W
ITH LEADEN MOVEMENTS
, William makes his way to the front door. Mary is already standing there in a plain grey coat and umbrella. She looks down, flicking through several letters in her hand.

He takes in her scents – homely, clean and new – and the grey phantoms of his tiredness disperse almost immediately. “We meet again,” he says, managing a smile.

Mary laughs as though he has just delivered the cleverest of quips. Her eyes focus on him conveying limitless trust. She eases on her thin gloves. William opens the door and holds it for Mary who smiles again as she precedes him outdoors.

They walk down his mother's red tiled path hearing their heels clatter through the silence. It is as though the mild flirtatiousness was safe inside his mother's house. Here, without any such canopy, it is more of an effort.

“Looks as though the weather's holding off after all,” he says.

“I love it when the clouds groan and threaten for hours.”

William smiles at her freshness. They are standing now on the curb outside his mother's home. “Which way are you going?” he asks.

“That way to the post box,” Mary answers, pointing.

“I'll walk along with you,” William announces casually. “I have to go that way too.”

The streets are very empty and quiet and amplify their footsteps.

“So, how are you settling in?” he asks.

“Very well, Mr. Stoker, thank you.” She blushes slightly. “I got a book from the library a few days ago. It was your father's book, Dracula.”

William lets out in involuntary groan, the cloak of last night's phantasm returning – the rolling rocking coach, and the vivid hallucination in the garden.

“Pardon me?” she asks.

“I'm sorry, Mary. That particular book has caused a little trouble recently. What do you think of it?”

“Oh it's so exciting, not at all like the books I normally read.”

William nods, wondering what a young uneducated girl would make of his father's turgid prose, thick as it was with cultural information and geographical detail.

“You must find it difficult,” he says with sympathy.

“Oh no. Not at all. It's very simple, like a fairy tale.”

William slows down, perplexed. “You read a great deal then?”

“Oh yes, I devour books. But Dracula is different. Not at all serious.”

“Not serious?” William exclaims.

“Not literary, I mean.”

He looks at her profile, trying to understand the change. One moment she is a charming, simple rustic from an obscure part of Ireland, the next she is dismissing his father's work as a triviality.

“For goodness' sake, don't tell my mother that!”

“She doesn't know I'm reading it. But I do like it,” she adds quickly.

“What do you normally read?”

“I've just finished reading Dickens's Great Expectations, and before that Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster. Do you remember your father writing Dracula?”

“Not really,” replies William. “He was very secretive and very busy. I just knew he was working on something big.” William's mind scans over the dark years of boyhood. An imaginary splash of sea water drips down his face, an echo from last night's dream. Just for an instant, he remembers the shipwreck of his childhood – the event mimicked in his nightmare. He can feel again the dragging motion of the lifeboat beneath him; he sees hands like pig's trotters, pink and swollen, disappear into the black sea beyond the stabbing oar; faces red with mandarin grimaces submerge and rise and submerge again. He remembers his words called through the storm to his unhearing mother: “If Father was here he would save us all!” And then, as though linked by an invisible strand, the fragrance of wood polish and other vaguer perfumes of the theatre whoosh him into a rare childhood moment of privilege and triumph; he has been allowed backstage with his father
whose voice booms like a sea captain through the dark auditorium checking his men are at their posts.

“Mr. Seward!”

“Sir!”

“Mr. Harker!”

“Sir!”

“Mr. Renfield.”

“Sir.”

Young William loves the pre-performance ritual. It confirms that his father is a god.

William walks along happily beside Mary, realizing he is not thinking of Dracula, or even of his own cynical late boyhood years, the era in which it was written.