by Paul Butler
“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.
WITH 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.
“How long did it take?” Mary asks further.
“Six or seven years I think.”
“Six or seven years!”
William feels stung. He wonders what the girl’s amazement might mean considering her judgment of a moment ago. Does she think it’s the sort of novel that could have been whipped off in a week?
“That wasn’t his main career, you know,” he replies. “He was Henry Irving’s business manager as well.”
“Sir Henry Irving! Yes, I know. He must have been a great man to know. Maybe that’s where your father got his inspiration!”
Mary looks down as though meditating on greatness.
William sighs, watching her face for a second, feeling a weight of inevitability on his shoulders. He feels like one of the conspirators in Julius Caesar, boiling with acid cynicism,fuming at the praise unjustly heaped upon one who is celebrated, yet impotent to move even with his white-hot malice against a man who is already dead.
“And you must have known him too?” she adds looking up with an open and trusting expression.
Caught in mid-frown, William tries to relax his face. “Oh yes. I knew him.”
Mary has slowed down as they are reaching the post box. William tips his hat and smiles. “Well, we must talk about this again, Mary.”
Mary’s face breaks into a broad smile, dispelling the pride in William’s chest. It isn’t her fault, he says to himself, feeling affection for the girl, for her optimism and innocence. The same warmth oozes through William’s memories.
He walks on alone with the afternoon fog descending around his shoulders. He is back in last night’s dream – the rocking carriage in vast, crystal night. He replays the vision of his father through the bedroom window. It’s curious how little this disturbs him, he reflects, considering how very much awake and sensible he felt at the time.
And as he progresses slowly towards the damp-blurred lights of the main road, a memory comes to the forefront of his mind. He is in the Lyceum auditorium again. A fuzzy darkness sweeps across the rows of empty seats in front of him. The theatre smell pervades the cool air: the scent of wax polish; the ghost of perfume from evenings past. William is seventeen and the magic of childhood and the theatre has long passed. But he realizes with a prickly nervousness this is a big night for his father, the eve of Dracula’s publication. Bram and the publisher have been frantically sending notes back and forth for the past few days. His father has been even busier than usual. William – usually shy, morose and distant from his father – has become preoccupied with this, his father’s latest venture. He knows there is something special about this book, that it marks a more concentrated, prolonged period of writing than is customary in his father’s life. And the result of all the excitement, the event to mark the end of several years of solitary work, is this evening.
Fewer people are present than ever
yone had hoped. William’s mother has not turned up at all, but the young man knows this is just her quirk, her dislike of the macabre subject and her unease with the fact her husband writes it. And there is something slipshod about the presentation. The actors Irving has allowed his father to use from the company are mainly too young and inexperienced for the parts they are reading.
But the main problem is the length of time it is all taking. William’s seat is becoming uncomfortable. Dissatisfied noises penetrate the darkness from several areas of the auditorium at once – not the muffled, polite throat clearings of an audience absorbed, but loud, careless coughs and fragments of conversation. This is a “pre-publication reading,” not a performance, and with actors merely standing on podiums running through pages of description and dialogue, it is becoming cumbersome.
There is too ample a stretch of time in which to dwell on all the shortcomings: the hurried nature of the makeup; the white dust of fake grey hair on the actor playing Abraham Van Helsing; the anemic vampire with the weak voice declaring with a comic lisp that his revenge will spread over centuries. But worst of all is the contrivance of having so much of the reading go to the vampire-hunting hero, Professor Van Helsing, with the thick, fake Dutch accent and the dialogue his father has written which painstakingly recreates the grammatical mistakes such a character might make.
William squirms in his seat towards the back of the main auditorium. Sweat drips down his spine. “Though we men have much valour and determination with which to protect our so dear charges,” Van Helsing drones on, “we must also needs be armed with much knowledge, as knowledge too is a sturdy armour in which we must wrap ourselves. Is it not so, my dear Madam Mina?”
The chatting of the audience has become constant now. There should be a dramatic pause here, but instead there is a steady murmur. “So, I must implore you,” continues Van Helsing, a cloud of dust flying off his wig, “what is it that you are trying to tell us, my brave young patient?”
“Only this, professor,” Mina replies, looking sincerely into the empty seats and indifferent loungers. “He who has wrought all this great misery upon us all … “
Someone guffaws. William feels a wire tensing inside him.
“… the very one who has caused this great ordeal …”