Stokers Shadow

by Paul Butler

  More laughter William’s fists tighten.

  “… is the saddest soul of all …”

  Suddenly, voices from behind him rise even more than usual; their tone is excited and conspiratorial. He hears the word “Irving.” A hush follows; a hush that has been absent for every moment of the long performance; a hush that is for the benefit of the great actor alone. William knows that Irving is watching somewhere from the back. Hooves begin galloping in William’s chest. He wants to rush out of the place altogether. But he is trapped because people will see him and comment on it. So he stays, his heart hammering. He can taste disaster like the air before a storm – tingling, moist and expectant. He knows Irving is going to come up with some “clever” put-down.

  Only he doesn’t hear it at first. Instead, a sudden eruption of laughter almost drowns the dialogue completely. The seats behind William remain alive with conspiratorial delight, things are being called out from one section of the auditorium to another. “What did he say?” someone calls, and William knows Irving must have left.

  “He said …” the speaker replies through laughter, “‘Dreadful!’” The word comes in a rasping, didactic tone, an imitation of Irving.

  WILLIAM ENTERS QUIETLY. Ruby, the maid, hovers around him more expertly and less charmingly than Mary, taking his hat and coat. Then he moves into the sitting room where Maud is already reading, one book open in her hand; another, black-bound and anonymous, closed and upon the chair arm. Maud looks at him and smiles.

  “What are you reading?” William asks.

  “Freud.” Maud closes the book. “Freud and Dracula. I’m psychoanalyzing your family.”

  William sits down unhappily. He picks up the newspaper laid on the side table and snaps it open. “And what have you found out?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  He peers over the top of the newspaper.

  “You want to tell me.”

  “Listen to this.”

  She puts the Freud book down and picks up the black book, the back of which has Dracula in faded gilt lettering.

  Maud clears her throat and unconsciously checks the fastening of her hair. She looks at William with a hint of trepidation and begins the passage of the novel in which Jonathan Harker is asleep on the castle floor and three lascivious women appear out of nowhere to prey on him. William feels his face sting with heat at the strangeness of it. Why would anyone go to sleep on the floor of an old castle anyway? he finds himself thinking. He feels exposed and naked as he prepares to defend his father’s skill.

  But another sensation quickly takes over. As Maud rhythmically makes her way through the description, peering up at him as she pauses, William feels as though a new nightmare is being unravelled within him. A nightmare of troubling, contradictory passions which are at once familiar and forgotten, long-buried in the deep earth of his memory.

  Jonathan Harker feels wicked, burning desire, that one of the women will kiss him and at the same time a sickening dread. He waits with a languorous ecstasy when he smells blood on their lips. But at the very height of this teasing expectation, Count Dracula bursts into the room ordering the women away and claiming the hero for himself.

  At this point, Maud stops and looks at William.

  “So,” William asks, afraid but defiant. “And what does that tell you?”

  “I don’t know,” Maud says, her brow furrowing.

  William feels his body stiffen. He puts his hand over his mouth pretending to check for stubble.

  “But, if my husband wrote that,” continues Maud uncertainly, “and if I was twenty-five years older, your mother’s age, with rather more old-fashioned views, I think I might feel threatened by it.”

  “She never seemed threatened by it to me.”

  “Maybe not in the past, she didn’t. But she’s threatened by it now, isn’t she? She’s threatened by what we’ll make of it today in 1922 with our greater liberty to discuss matters once hidden.”

  “I hardly think so,” says William, deflecting the darkness which looms from Maud’s suggestion. “People of my mother’s generation were hardly innocent. What about Dorian Gray? Dracula comes practically on its heels.”

  “But Dorian Gray talked of perversion while Dracula kept it all hidden and encoded.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything hidden or encoded about it,” William insists, wondering at this lie and feeling his face burn again as he repeats it. “It’s a simple, straightforward story about vampirism.”

  “I don’t think it is about vampirism. I think it’s about something else.”

  “Naturally,” William responds. “You’ve been reading Freud.”

  “Do you ever think about Henry Irving?”

  William shakes his head impatiently.

  “I mean,” continues Maud, “about what his influence on the novel might have been?”

  “The only influence he might have had is lead actor if Dracula was ever turned into a stage production.” William begins to scan the paper again but immediately his imagination is overtaken by a matching of pictures so vivid and intense it cannot be denied: the pigeons whirling around Irving’s statue meld into the pamphlet illustration of the German film, the thin, crooked vampire and the banner garland of flying rats obeying their master.

  “Why are you so sure about that?”

  “Sure about what?”

  “You made up your mind that the answer was ‘no’ before I even asked the full question.”

  “I don’t understand you,” William says frowning, lowering the newspaper again.

  “You don’t want to talk about Irving and his influence on your father. It’s a painful subject for you.”

  “Nonsense,” William insists. “I was talking in great detail about Irving to Mary, my mother’s new girl.”

  “You talked to the maid about Irving?” Maud says.

  “She did most of the talking.” William pretends to be absorbed in a headline. “And she’s not a maid, I told you. More of a companion.”

  “Well, whoever she is, she’s lucky to get you to talk about something personal without prising it out of you the way I have to.”

  William drops the paper onto his lap. “Firstly, it wasn’t a personal conversation, it was small-talk. Secondly, I felt sorry for the girl at the beck and call of my mother. And lastly and most importantly, I was walking down the same street at the same time so my options were either to talk to the girl or ignore her, pretending not to know who she was. I’m sure that’s the course of which my mother would have approved. I’m rather surprised to find you agreeing with her on such matters.”

  William is breathless and overheated after this diatribe. He snaps the paper up again, but has to put it down as his wife responds.

  “Those were your only two options, were they, William?”

  “Yes.”

  Feigning confidence, William begins to look at the paper again.

  “Sometimes I wonder. You talk about your mother’s judgment failing. I’m not so sure she’s the only one.”

  “What is the matter with you, Maud?”

  “I’m sorry,” Maud sighs. “I just find it hurtful when you can be so carefree, so natural with some people, yet so brittle when you’re with me.”

  “Maud, I can assure you I have not been ‘carefree’, as you put it, with anyone in the last little while.” He suddenly feels tender towards her and speaks gently. “You are not missing out on anything. I am quite miserable all the time.”

  Quite suddenly, Maud relaxes and laughs affectionately.

  Ruby enters with a tea tray.

  William and Maud become silent.

  CHAPTER V

  Mary drowses, watching the curtains ripple and flutter, caressed by unseen hands, drawn silently through to the other side and returned just as gently into the room. She lies in the room’s darkest corner beneath a sheet and a single blanket. The moon radiates like a bright half-halo through the little open square. Blue light skims off the window ledge and to
uches the tip of the bedpost at her toe.

  Mary follows the dovelike movement of the curtains, carried along by the gorgeous fantasies in Dracula, and the heady, succulent images of blood and death. One passage is replaying in her mind: Jonathan Harker peering out of a castle window at night only to see the Count slowly crawl like a lizard down the sheer vertical wall, his cloak spreading around him like great black wings. She thinks of the disbelief that must accompany such a sight, and the abandon it must take to weave such ideas into a story. She looks into the soft, magical darkness and thinks of Mr. William Stoker.

  William is floating on the undulating breeze. He does not quite recognize the garden around him which abounds with midsummer life: squirrels, rabbits, swifts and swallows darting from tree to tree. But the bright starlight and the intoxicating scent of wild roses seem to echo a world from his childhood, a mythic forest of paradise and plenty which seems to have been always beyond the rim of his imagination. He wafts effortlessly past the grand cedar tree with its levels of luscious green from which heads and tails of squirrels appear and disappear as though lost in the ecstasy of endless discovery. Although the moon is out, there is sunlight too. Day and night interchange constantly like brightness and shadow beneath a half-clouded sky. Patches of the garden dance joyfully in pools of gold, just as others glisten in the silver-blue of night. Each is the equal in beauty to the other; in both moonlight and sunlight every blade and leaf dances with the impossible, glorious happiness of perpetual life and motion.

  A pale brick wall comes into view with ivy trailing upwards like a river. William follows spirit-like, inhaling the white ivy blossom as he reaches it. He finds his outstretched hand is touching the cool moist stone, and slowly his hands and feet join onto the wall and brush against the ivy leaves and branches as he begins to ascend. His fingers ease effortlessly into the wall as though it were putty and he feels a sweet sensation as if his hands and fingers have gained the ability to taste. A hummingbird whirs at his shoulder and he lifts himself higher, enjoying the sweet moisture from the brick as it seeps into his skin. He raises himself from sunlight into a patch of glistening moonlight and becomes aware of soft ringlets of gold suspended above him. He ascends further and feels the silken joyous texture of golden hair tumbling upon his forehead and cheeks, like delirious, sparkling rain. He caresses the hair with his hands and whispers tenderly the name: “Mary, Mary,” as her face comes into view before him.

  A second later things have changed. Mary is in Middle Ages costume again and William is standing in a dungeon with his back against a dripping wall. William looks into her bright smile and ocean-blue eyes. She pulls the black shackles from his hands, letting them drop like licorice. Mary comes closer, her lips so close to his neck that her warm breath touches. “Mary,” William murmurs again. Darkness closes around him and he notices that everything has turned to a horizontal position and that the dungeon wall has become soft and hollow, obeying the contours of his back. He calls her name into the darkness once more and then sees the window and dressing table in the indistinct moonlight.

  He shoots up in bed, aware suddenly of Maud’s warmth beside him. He watches her dark shape closely making sure his wife is asleep.

  SHE MAKES A low primal groan which subsides into a slow exhalation. William assumes she must be in a deep sleep. Reassured, he gazes towards the moonlight-brightened curtains and remembers last night’s vision. He feels drawn to the impossible, to the idea his dreams are part of a message in cipher, something that will lead him ultimately into the garden of paradise he keeps glimpsing – towards the notion that his father’s spirit might be a messenger leading the way, telling him where he took a wrong turn.

  Carefully, he pushes the covers off his legs and turns so that his feet touch the rug. Then, shivering from the unexpected chill, he stands and takes a step towards the windows.

  “What,” Maud moans.

  William realizes he has miscalculated; she is waking. He feels trapped.

  “What!” she says louder.

  “It’s … don’t worry, it’s just me,” he replies, not moving any closer to the window.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you ill?”

  The moonlight catches her bare arm which reaches up to her forehead; her neck is raised from the pillow.

  “I’m just going to check the garden,” William says, too muddle-headed to think in terms that make any sense.

  “Check the garden? You know I’m a light sleeper, William. I wish you wouldn’t do this.”

  “I’ve never done it before,” he replies, comically stranded on the rug, as though unable to continue without permission.

  “You did it last night,” she replies sighing and banging the pillow behind her. “Why are you checking the garden? What’s wrong with it?”

  “There’s a man standing in the middle of it.”

  “What?” she replies laying her head down again on the pillow. “You’re having a nightmare. Come back to bed.”

  He sighs, turns and climbs back into bed. He watches the curtains move slightly although the windows are closed.

  THE SHINY PALE leaves and knotty clumps of oriental twigs and branches look incongruous to Mary’s eyes, especially beneath the sliced fruit cake. But it is as though nothing in England is English – at least not the china she has been polishing all morning. In the last hour, she has travelled the globe. She has encountered the curved, bronzed features of Indian princes with loose silken trousers and earrings. She has viewed the snow-ridged mountains of some unknown eastern highlands populated by men with huge furry hats and skinny moustaches. And now finally she is gazing at the sparse, decorous beauty of the Japanese court with single trees, waterfalls and beautiful white-faced women.

  “Shall I take the tea in, Mrs. Davis?”

  Mrs. Davis glances up as she places the teapot on the tray. She smiles naturally, like one used to pleasing.

  “Well yes, Miss Manning, that would be a nice idea.”

  Mary wonders whether Mrs. Davis is as confused by Mary’s status as she is herself. “Miss Manning” seems wrong coming from a lady twenty years older than her. She has always been just Mary in Ireland. And here her elevation makes little sense. She does the chores of a servant most of the time. She lives in the servants’ quarters. Yet Mrs. Davis is almost deferential.

  Mrs. Davis opens the scullery door and Mary departs holding the tray tight, trying not to let the Japanese china clink so hard it may break.

  The tray wobbles as, one-handed, she opens the door. She remembers not to knock – knocking, she was told very early on by Mrs. Davis, is a faux pas. (Mary did not know what a faux pas was and Mrs. Davis had to explain it to her. From then on the puzzle has been less about strange customs and more about why the English constantly lapse into some foreign dialect when they feel threatened.)

  Within, Mrs. Stoker sits with the bald, bespectacled man to whom Mary had answered the door. Mary wants another look at this Mr. Thring who seems like a character from Dickens, all angular details, and delicate, thought-out movements. Neither Mrs. Stoker nor Mr. Thring look up as she enters and places the tea before them on the little mahogany table, but there is a silence and she assumes one of them is about to address her. But no; it’s just a lapse in the conversation.

  “Well, when your son came to see me yesterday, I realized that if I had any news at all – good or bad – I must take the golden opportunity to visit the famous Mrs. Stoker.”

  Mary feels stranded between Mr. Thring and Mrs. Stoker, her shoulders beginning to slope as she tries to work out whether she should speak, leave or pour the tea. She is about to ask Mr. Thring whether he takes milk and sugar when Mrs. Stoker answers him.

  “I do believe, Mr. Thring, that you are an incorrigible flatterer, but may I say a delightful one.” Mary turns to see the bright openness of Mrs. Stoker’s pale blue eyes; it seems she has become a different person entirely – younger, happier, almost playful. Then sh
e hears a more familiar offhand whisper saying, “Just leave the tea, Mary, I’ll deal with it.”

  Mary’s ears begin to burn only when she gets to the threshold of the sitting room and the hall; only then does she feel the full force of the disparity, the less-than-nothing esteem in which she is held. She catches muted words through the closing door:

  Mrs. Stoker: “Poor girl, I hoped that London might have made something of her.”

  Mr. Thring: “How generous of you to take her in.”

  Mary faces the closed door and breathes in the foreign scents of wood and wax pervading the hallway. For a moment she hopes they are talking about someone else. After all, the exchange makes little sense with reference to herself – she was in a better social position in her own homeland by far, especially on this evidence. But with a dull thud, she realizes that the unthinkable is true. She is the unnamed “her,” the imaginary figure cowering in the gutter. She wanders slowly back into the scullery, towards the little oasis of civility she finds in Mrs. Davis.

  The housekeeper’s dark, intelligent eyes catch hers for a second as she kneads a wedge of dough. Mary peels off her apron, feeling like a ghost – numb and detached from reality.

  “Mrs. Davis, I’m going out for a bit if you don’t need me.”

  Mrs. Davis smiles, her hands still working. “So you should, Miss. Get out and see some sights.”

  MR. THRING IS conjuring a magic world for Florence – her own past coloured by the admiration of youth. He is describing what she had believed the world to have forgotten – the flamboyant and invincible circle to which she once belonged, characters who could easily have been woven into the great mythic tales: Arthur and his knights, Jason and the Argonauts, Sinbad and his wild voyages in search of riches. He talks of men who leaped through flames, daring all upon principle – Whistler’s libel action against a spokesman for the brutish, philistine public and the penury that followed him; poor Oscar’s fierce last stand and the even worse fate that came to meet his defiance. But they were men alive with the fire of valour and faith. These things are their own rewards.