Stokers Shadow

by Paul Butler

  Maud finishes, closing the book slowly and looking at the rug.

  She looks up and William looks away.

  “Well,” she says conclusively.

  “It’s just a story,” William sighs.

  “Do you find it embarrassing?”

  “Why should I?” He gets up and walks over to the fireplace. Then, realizing that to start poking the fire again would be too obvious an obfuscation, he turns and faces his wife with his hands in his waistcoat pockets. “It wasn’t supposed to be analyzed, it was supposed to be read.”

  “Yet both you and your mother are treating it as though it is a landmine sitting in the mud. At least I can’t seem to get you to talk about it.”

  “I don’t mind talking about it,” William says blushing at the lie, and realizing that he has repeated the exact same behaviour as the day before. He has once again talked almost freely about it with Mary but is clamming up with his wife. “I don’t understand what it is that you want from me,” he says rather rudely, and immediately regrets it. “I mean,” he adds softly, “I don’t quite see the purpose.”

  “Aren’t you curious?” asks Maud.

  “About what?”

  “About what your father thought of women,” she pursues quietly. She watches him closely as he leans against the mantelpiece with an elbow.

  “He loved women. He adored them.”

  “He appears to adore Lucy too, until about halfway through this novel of his.”

  “She turns into a vampire,” he says emphatically.

  “Very convenient.” But she smiles in tired defeat, takes the novel from her lap and places it on the little coffee table in front of her. She takes up her needlepoint.

  William returns to his seat. He finds his wife’s intrusions unsettling. What right has she, after all, to trespass into his father’s mind? He realizes that there is more at stake than this. Her exploration agitates him because, by unpicking the privacy of his memory, she is weaving her way through his own mind as well, not just that of his father. His father is within him, William realizes. He is merely another chapter in the same book.

  With heated discomfort, William becomes aware also that his growing infatuation with his mother’s new girl is woven into the same secrecy. They are part of the same great vine, protecting the same dark desires. He has not mentioned his tea at the Ritz with Mary, and he is steering away from any talk about his afternoon that could force him to lie. He wishes to delay the moment of confirmation, but he knows the direction in which he is heading. He knows he has already passed the sign marked Danger. And now, as his wife’s fingers start their rhythmic movements with the needle, he thinks of the tangle he has created for himself. He has pledged himself to help Mary and the mission now burns urgently in his heart – this is a monster obligation he has been feeding with the abandonment of despair. How, he wonders, can he elevate Mary’s position without raising suspicions as to his motivations?

  Both mother and wife, it seems, stand in his way. As he already helps his mother with a small allowance, the only way he can lobby in Mary’s favour would be to increase that monthly payment. Such an initiative on his part would raise his mother’s suspicions. Given her contrary nature, he might not even get her to agree. And it would also involve an open conversation with Maud. Most crucially of all, he knows himself to be quite unpracticed at this kind of subterfuge. He knows the walls he has erected are far too fragile not to be swept away instantly by minds as penetrating as those of Maud and his mother.

  William stares at the fire listening to the hollow tick of the mantelpiece clock. Maud, oblivious to him, works dexterously at the needle.

  Urgency presses upon William’s spirit; this mission to help Mary, dark and imperfect as it is, is part of the great redemption that has been filling his dreams of late, part of the golden chivalry he has been seeking to claim. Even through his wife’s reading of Lucy’s impalement, another vision ran like a loose thread – that of his mother with the stake and Mary in the coffin. It was upon Mary’s breast that he saw the white dint of flesh stand out as the stake point descended. It was Mary’s white face that came alive in screaming pain as the blood spurted out through the silver shroud. And in the background,he glimpsed his own form, lost in the shadows behind his father’s heroes with their Latin prayer.

  The flames die down and the coals begin to glow. William wonders why his urge to save Mary should have to be so utterly soiled. Separate from desire and romantic secrecy there is, after all, an important mission to achieve. Thoughts of self-chastisement begin to deflate William. If only Mary’s saviour were a worthier knight, one capable of more selfless dedication. He thinks of his father. And now he remembers an important distinction. It was Lucy’s soul the men in Dracula were saving, not her life. If he could recall the conversation with his wife, this is the true argument he would pursue. Their standards were so lofty, the codes of chivalry so perfect in their total dedication to the adored one, that they would not allow Lucy to shame herself in death; they would save her from the degradation of the vampire existence that chained her and threatened to mock the purity they knew.

  William thinks of his father, and of his absolute dedication to Irving. This was a type of chivalry too. He remembers how his once robust, striding parent was reduced to a bearlike creature bending over his study desk, collating his life’s work before that life dripped entirely out of his weary spirit. He remembers how his father’s decline could be measured to a point in time as precise as the pivot, and how that point in time matched perfectly with Irving’s death in 1905.

  And what did his father choose as his great task once the black clouds of mortality began rolling toward him? What great work did he feel compelled to complete? William remembers how the answer had confounded and frustrated the young man he was at the time. Now his father was free to live for himself and spend his time writing novels. But the letters, scraps and old photographs that started to litter his desk were not research for an original story. They were not the cumulation of frustrated dreams now released in a torrent of creative energy. These were the raw materials for another kind of great enterprise. And this all-absorbing task was simply to mirror everything that went before. The turmoil of preparation in his father’s study was for a book to be entitled, Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving.

  As though he had not dedicated enough of himself to the actor! William thought at the time. He remembers the surprise he felt at his mother of all people, never Irving’s greatest admirer. Rather than trying to persuade him towards a more selfish path, as William felt sure she would, she spent many hours a week earnestly filing, searching, scanning materials for this same great work. He remembers how tender she was to her husband in those years, indulging him in all the details and fancies that had once been her daily irritations.

  William recognizes now what it was that changed her. For the first time in his life he feels something like it himself. She was in awe of her husband’s love for Irving. She had seen the inescapable divinity in a devotion so great that even his own obituary should be a tribute to his friend.

  FLORENCE LIES FACING the dark ceiling. She listens to the groan and creak of the windows under the gusting wind. It is a comforting, eternal sound which exists quite beyond the sordid, troubled present. Her soul drifts effortlessly between pitch blackness and the shining gold of her memory. The loneliness and terror of her later life tumble away like dark leaves in the wind, turning to joy and sunlight in a second. The darkness returns, but only for a drumbeat before tumbling again into open blue skies. The ever-changing moan of the wind holds her in the season of perpetual alteration. She fears nothing, as nothing lasts beyond the moment.

  The warmth of her visit from Mr. Thring established a base of joy that cannot be entirely eroded by the frustrations that followed: her foolish, disobedient maid leaving without a word and returning so late; her own inability to deal with it straightaway; and the constant aching in her arms and legs, a herald of the trying season to come. B
ut the tingle of starlight is there, beyond it all, reminding her that, whatever the drudgery that followed, she had once been on the mountain, surrounded by gods and legends, and that this is her natural home. Endurance is to be expected. Downfall is inevitable. The blight of destruction is already in London, and within the walls of her house in the presumptuous young woman from Galway Bay she had the poor judgment to accept.

  But all this does not wash away the glories of the past; glory is transient by its very nature.

  Florence’s thoughts darken, the leaves turning over into blackness again. She becomes aware of the dim oil portrait of her husband in the shadows overlooking her bed. It’s curious that she has grown so used to ignoring it, but that very lately, she has caught Bram’s tired and sombre eye while turning toward the wall at dawn, or slipping into bed last thing at night. Bram makes her uneasy. It is as though the ten cold years that separate their last meeting have done more than time is supposed to do; they have turned them into strangers, perhaps even enemies. That lonely stretch of time has worn away the happy memories. Like wind over sand dunes, each time she has talked over the past with friends, she has unwittingly altered the landscape. She can no longer remember what she actually felt.

  And then there is another kind of recollection, the type that remains locked deep in the vaults of her brain, troubling her more with each unwelcome encounter and growing in strength and clarity. These memories are like sea monsters feeding upon silence and fear. And they are pressing upon Florence now, surfacing with a whole range of sensory detail – she can even taste the flavour of the dust – clearly delineating the time, place and mood.

  One lasts for just a moment though its sadness and confusion are eternal. She is in the very bed that she now lies upon. But she is gazing off at the window. Her husband’s body lowers the bed’s opposite side into a valley. But something is wrong. A terrifying noise breaks the silence in staccato rhythm, a kind of gasping, muffled yelping. Jolting movements accompany the sound, shaking the bed and rattling the headboard against the wall. Florence keeps her body stiff, unmoving. The unacceptable horror that her husband should be crying – an action of such unmanly despair from a proud, protective man – is surpassed by the probable cause. She knows that Irving said something cruel about her husband’s new novel earlier. A special reading had taken place today and she overheard a remark made by someone who had attended.Florence listens hard. Could there be any explanation for this dreadful noise? Gripping the pillow with her hand, she tells herself that it is sometimes difficult to tell. In the still of night even snoring can sound like a battalion laying siege with a full arsenal of cannons. She closes her eyes and tries to convince herself her husband might be snoring.

  FLORENCE 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.

  THIS 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.

  CHAPTER VIII

  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.

  THE 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.”