Stokers Shadow

by Paul Butler

  “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?”

  MARY 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.

  THE 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.

  Mrs. Stoker stares at her angrily for a second. Then her free hand reaches down suddenly and claws the chair leg, gripping hard so that the whites of the knuckles are visible. Pain seems to surge through her face.

  Mary is alarmed. She had not considered the chance that the old lady might make herself ill. She suddenly feels guilty and confused.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Stoker?” she asks, bending down slightly, afraid to approach too closely.

  “Spying!” Mrs. Stoker hisses.

  Mary gives a bewildered smile. “No, Ma’am!” she says as reassuringly as she can.

  Mrs. Stoker is breathing hard. Her hand has released the chair leg and she seems no longer in physical distress. Mary begins to feel sorry for her. Suddenly she is just an old woman – her own mother in ten years perhaps.

  Mrs. Stoker holds up the book again. Does she want me to take it? A pleading look takes over Mrs. Stoker’s face. Mary reaches halfway towards the book. Mrs. Stoker does not move it away at first, but then does very slightly, lodging the cover awkwardly between her palm and wrist.

  There is a second of uneasy intimacy as their eyes lock at close quarters. Fear spills from Mrs. Stoker’s pale eyes; pity oozes from Mary’s. The emotions meet with such vivid force and mutual realization that both of them instantly know their relationship is changed forever. The notion of Mrs. Stoker’s superiority, upon which all the old lady’s comfort rests, will no longer be able to sustain itself.

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nbsp; Mrs. Stoker lurches backwards in her chair, pursing her lips, picking up the broken driftwood of her former composure. “Mary,” she says at last, her breathing more steady. “Open the fireguard.”

  Mary walks silently around her mistress. She picks up the long, brass guard-handle standing by the hearth and, with it, clinks open the guard. Mrs. Stoker turns halfway towards Mary and the fire and holds the book suspended.

  “Put it in and close it,” she says weakly, turning her face entirely from Mary as the weight of the book leaves her hand. Mary now holds the book. Without a word, or even much hesitation, she finds herself following her mistress’s instructions. The book lands closed, hitting the coals with an uneven thud. Sparks waver upwards and the fire makes a few tentative licks around the cover. A sizzle follows, weak and anticlimactic. Mary stands watching for a moment as the fire wobbles and ducks, reluctant to set about the task of devouring its dense subject. Then she closes the fireguard. Is it inevitability that makes me follow her instructions so obediently? she wonders.Is it fear of hunger and unemployment? She is amazed to realize it is neither of these things. It is rather that she has looked into the vast canyon of Mrs. Stoker’s desperation and sadness and has found herself dwarfed. She has seen a whole lifetime of unhappiness, dread and disappointment, and a corresponding span of hope, desire and love. Mary is suddenly afraid of the next forty years and she is humbled by the feelings of one who has already lived them.

  AFTER MARY GOES back to her work, Florence is left alone. The house is silent now. Like a war zone after bombardment, every flicker and squeak of life has moved to some far-off place. Even the parrot is still. A numb unreality hums in Florence’s ears.

  A few moments ago, Mrs. Davis entered and asked if she needed anything. She spoke nervously, as though she knew all about the disorientation, about the way she keeps acting strangely and can’t seem to stop. A laughingstock with my own servants! Florence tells herself cruelly, wanting to wound herself, needing to create a sharp, bleeding gash where pain stubbornly refuses to rise.

  Florence dimly understands that in reality no one sees her as a laughingstock; that, if anything, they pity her. Even the little uneducated girl from an obscure village in her home country, pities her, the widow of Bram Stoker, barrister and author. But she does not let this thought linger. It is much harder to face. It gives her no enemy to rage against, no focus for her unhappiness. And she needs an enemy, even if it is only herself.

  She has no idea, none at all, why she went so far as to burn Dracula in front of her maid and make herself seem so thoroughly deranged. It was an impulse, a fear swung wildly out of control, like a misdemeanour which grows into awesome and terrifying proportions as the culprit commits greater and greater crimes in the process of concealment.

  The idea started when she asked Mrs. Davis to light the fire. An image flashed in her mind of her husband’s book burning on it. Is that why I asked Mrs. Davis to light the fire? And there was satisfaction and relief in the picture. Because she could burn the book if she wanted to, it gave her a little thrill of power. She could cause terror and confusion to rise in another as well as herself, and she knew this would be a welcome distraction. But it was not a plan. It all happened by accident, like a landslide. She dared herself and found herself following the dare like a sleepwalker. She wanted to engage the army of devouring ants in open battle, and in doing so she had given them all her power. She had turned them into monster insects with yard-long pincers of steel. She had given that army the power to overthrow her. Perhaps she was tired of waiting, tired of the invisible legions approaching inch by inch.

  And her follies were not over; she had no idea how long it might last. A moment ago, when Mrs. Davis had asked her if she was all right, she had said – and again she has no idea why – she was “seriously considering Mary’s future here.” It was like a voice running through her, drawing words up from some primal well of self-destruction. And those words had trapped her even more decisively. Now it was a matter of pride. She had made an issue of every foolish thing she had already done,and she had committed herself to more. She was a boulder rolling downhill at an ever-increasing rate. Now she would have to dismiss Mary from her service to save face.

  FLORENCE FEELS THE past rising around her. Through the unnatural silence she hears the banging of carpenters’ hammers, the stomping up and down corridors, the bellowing of minor players. She is willing the present away from her, drawing on whatever shadows will disperse the unnatural, claustrophobic silence. She is walking along a passageway somewhere in the bare honeycomb of tunnels, wardrobes, and scene docks that make up the Lyceum backstage. Mothballs, turpentine, and wood dust mingle in the dim air. Suddenly, from a doorway to the side a head like Punch, ghastly, painted and aged beneath the offensive brightness, pokes itself into the corridor, stares at her blankly, and then disappears again. One of the imps from Faust, Florence thinks, shivering. There is spontaneous laughter from a closed dressing room door as she walks past, turning right into the corridor of the lead actors.

  “William!” she shouts with a sense of ownership. She knows that Irving does not tolerate interruptions this close to a performance, but she resents the fact that her young son is swallowed up somewhere in the bowels of Irving’s theatre. She feels as though he has been taken from her, corrupted by the customs of theatrical life.

  Suddenly, another goblin appears, this time scampering out of Irving’s dressing room at the very end of the passageway. It is a child this time, not a man, his face painted with the visage of the devil: black eyebrows, a folk beard, black under his eyes. It is William. A wave of anger rises through her. She feels as though her own role has been usurped, her son tricked away from her by this make-believe life that swamps their family. A panic comes across her that William will grow up like her husband.

  She makes an exasperated noise as her son runs up to her, excited. She bends down and starts trying to wipe the paint off with a handkerchief. William stands before her laughing but flinching from the blows from the handkerchief, wanting her to join in the joke.

  “William!” she says loudly so that Irving might hear from his partly open door. “What have you done to yourself?”

  “It wasn’t me, Mother, it was Mr. Irving,” William says innocently.

  “Well, that was very silly of Mr. Irving,” Florence replies, still working at the greasepaint which is only smudging and looking worse.

  “You must pardon me my folly, my dear Mrs. Stoker,” Irving’s voice booms out from beyond the open door. “Lucifer was, after all, a fallen angel and the lad has the look of an angel about him.”

  Florence glances towards the open crack in the door. She feels herself half invited by the voice into this forbidden place and she knows she may never have such a chance again.

  “Go and find your father, William,” she says quietly. “I need to speak to Mr. Irving.”

  William runs off instantly and happily with his absurdly smudged devil face. Florence walks towards the half-opened door and knocks.

  “Come!” shouts Irving.

  Florence crosses the threshold, feeling some trepidation. Irving is alone. He is gazing into the mirror, draped from head to foot in a one-piece suit of scarlet. The hood is down for a moment and he is still applying greasepaint to his face, thickening the black eyebrows, turning himself into the image of Mephistopheles.

  Florence pushes the door behind her so it almost closes.

  “The perfect devil,” she says, surprised at her daring.

  Irving turns around. “Thank you!” he says proudly. Then he looks back towards the mirror and resumes work upon his face.

  Florence feels as though she is trespassing. The strong smell of the greasepaint and the other perfumes of Irving’s profession – eau de cologne, leather polish, vinegar – mix into the austere atmosphere. There is no carpet beneath her shoes, just wooden boards. The dressing table and mirror, a rouge chaise longue and a Japanese-style screen are the only furnishings, and they are spac
ed far apart. It is a frightening, alien bareness which surrounds her. It tells of feelings exposed, taboos ignored – the opposite of the plushness that surrounds her own life. She wonders at a man who can walk out in front of many hundreds baring his soul as Irving does.

  Florence circles around the edges of the dressing room, approaching slowly. She feels she must say something quickly. The longer her presence is unexplained, the worse the silence will be when he turns to find she is not gone. Florence draws near to his left shoulder like one edging along a tightrope.

  “William is like his father,” she finds herself saying softly. “He is sensitive, easily influenced, reluctant to put himself forward.” There is a hint of accusation creeping into her voice now.

  She sees Irving’s eyes flicker in the mirror as he paints his left eyebrow to a sharper point. He would like to gauge her expression without looking directly at her, she thinks, but she is not in the reflection.

  “We both understand Bram,” he says nonchalantly.

  “I understand Bram,” she says in a proprietorial tone. Then she relents slightly.

  “I’m just not sure,” she begins gently, then comes to a pause. “I’m just not sure,” she repeats and looks childlike towards the bare floorboards. “I’m not sure that I understand … you.” The words have trickled out at last like spilled wine. She gasps. This is far too close to intimacy, she thinks, and the false propinquity is cloying. She is angry with herself, with the way she has misrepresented her feelings. Worst of all, she is angry that she has put the actor centre stage yet again, despite her resentment that this is where he always dwells in her life.

  Irving’s face is slowly turning towards her. “My dear,” he replies, ease and gratification showing behind his Satan mask, “there is nothing to understand.”

  Florence takes a deep breath. This time she determines to be practical and precise. “Mr. Irving,” she says, pressing herself backwards into the wall, “why did you hire another writer to adapt Faust for the stage and not simply give my husband the job?” Her heart is beating like a mallet but this feeling of confrontation is more wholesome than what went on before.