My father died when I was in medical school and although I loved him in a way, I have to admit a burden was lifted from my shoulders. The huge Victorian terrace house became mine and for the first time in my life I was completely unafraid to enjoy myself. I suddenly found I was an “eligible young gentleman,” as the old matrons put it, and not only that, but an eligible young gentleman living in Mayfair. To comprehend the full meaning of this you must understand that Mayfair was one of the two or three most exclusive regions of mad and electric London. Fashion was dictated from those narrow, twisted streets with their dignified houses and vast, lugubrious blocks of flats and ornate hotels. Even the very name of Mayfair evoked visions of red carpets and hothouse flowers, of parvenus and great courtesans, of ermine and white satin and even whiter shoulders.
It was a wonderful time to be alive and made even more wonderful by the fact that this was when I met my Camille. If there ever was an exhilarating experience that even came close to my vision of the angel, it had to have been my first glimpse of Camille. To be quite honest I have considered lying and saying that the first time I saw her she was stepping down from some beetle-black four-wheeled carriage in front of the Baron Alfred de Rothschild’s or the Maison Dorée, but truthfully, Camille was what society of the time impolitely referred to as a soiled dove, or an houri, one of the dark-eyed nymphs of the Moslem Paradise.
I met her at a dance hall, one of the notorious night houses of King’s Road. She was a radiant creature with auburn hair and raven eyes and the smallest, most delicate hands I have ever seen. She reminded me of a character created by Edgar Allan Poe, the American poet so admired by the French: Ligeia... the lady Ligeia, whose haunting face caused one to shiver with the same luminous wonder as “the ocean... the falling of a meteor... and the glances of unusually aged people.”
But she was not Ligeia. Camille was small and pale and she drew one to her, but there was nothing deathly in all of this. No, in fact Camille exuded life. She was always in movement, dancing or rushing to see something. Even when she paused for breath, there was a fire in her, and beneath the carefully learned Victorian gestures and expressions there glimmered something unspeakably sensual. Camille was, indeed, an houri, but in the antique sense. She was a rare flicker of life amid the dark and shallow creatures of the London night. At once fragile and wild, like a newborn colt. And yet, disconcerting, even magical, like a haunted china doll.
In striking contrast to this was where Camille lived. My memories of the place are fragmentary and troubled. Her flat was above one of the night houses, with a narrow gaslit staircase and peeling cork linoleum floors. There was a rustling in the place and here and there a fragment of muffled conversation. There was also a terrible smell, a smell that might have been mistaken for an animal smell were it not so distinctively human. It was an unpleasant smell, but morbidly interesting in its humanness, like the smell of childbirth only without chloroform or antiseptic. Most repellent of all was Camille’s dingy little room, and here my recollection fades. I dimly remember only a brief glimpse of a cot whose canvas was polished gray from use, a shabby blanket.
I only mention these things to emphasize how unlike Camille was from the squalor of her existence. She, too, seemed to recognize this and there was something very detached and innately aristocratic about her. I’m sure Father turned in his grave when I married her.
It was not easy making Camille a lady of Mayfair. For months we struggled refining her natural grace and bringing out the inborn melody of her voice. Most difficult of all was the myriad of incidental information she had to learn to survive in society. There were rules of conversation and certain table customs, operas to become familiar with, and nuances of language. The Duchess of Sutherland was wearing magenta to help the textile workers, and so magenta was distingué. And everyone must know the quadrille.
In an effort to enrich Camille’s background I decided to read various books and poems aloud to her. On one of these occasions I chose a free adaptation of a work by an eleventh-century Persian, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam. I had purchased the work in the form of an anonymous pamphlet, but its imagery was being so touted by the likes of Dante Gabriel Rosetti and Swinburne that its translator, a Suffolk poet named Edward FitzGerald, was becoming quite famous in London.
On the occasion of my reading it we were in my father’s bedroom—or; rather, my bedroom, then. It was strange, taking over the master bedroom. The burned-cork smell was gone and the fireplace burned a little warmer. I also kept the gas jets on just a little so that the place wasn’t so gloomy. But the huge green bed was still there, and the watercolors painted by aunts in the Highlands, and the foreboding seashell chair.
Camille sat stiffly in the window seat. She wore an ample white nightgown, very frilly about her neck and falling in voluminous pleats. Her auburn hair had just been brushed out by her French servant and was unusually full and wavy. There was something almost animated about it, sinuous, like vines wrapping around the base of a tree. Each rivulet of hair, each wave and curl, caught the shimmer of the gas jets, bringing out a rich copper color not always present in Camille’s hair. Her tiny white hands were folded motionless in her lap. Her face was blank.
She was beautiful, but I have to confess she looked a little silly. She was so small and frail she seemed lost in the immense nightgown, her small, round face a little overwhelmed by so much hair.
“Camille,” I said. “I’m going to read you a poem.”
“Go on,” she said.
I cringed a little at her choice of words. “Please don’t use that expression.”
She drew in her breath and sat a little more upright. “Pray, read me a poem,” she said in more rounded syllables.
“Much better?” I commended, thumbing through the pages. I stood a few feet in front of her and held the book at eye level. I read her several verses.
I glanced up from the book. “Now, there, wasn’t that lovely?”
Camille remained unmoved.
I read her another verse. I paused again to get her reaction, but she seemed more bored than appreciative. I was about to begin again when one of the gas jets in the room began to flicker and I crossed over to adjust it.
“No, leave it.”
I turned toward her with pursed brows. “Why?”
“Don’t you think that’s lovely, just the flicker of the gas jet?”
“I suppose it is,” I grunted and once again lifted the book to my face. But this time Camille quickly jumped up and snatched the book from me. She thumbed from page to page looking at each as if they were blank and there was nothing there to see. Suddenly, she returned her gaze to me as she assumed an expression that in time would grow all too familiar to me. Her head was tilted back. She regarded me with an air that for all the world could have been a silent, contemplative fury. Except that it wasn’t. Or didn’t seem to be. At least, Camille never followed it with anger, but usually some sort of mild agreement with what I was saying, a nodding of the head as if to say she had given in.
Her body acquired the same air. For a few seconds it was very rigid and tight Her small hands seemed to press upon the book with unusual pressure. And then she came out of the spell, became a little dreamy and murmured, “It is very lovely.”
“Come here, Camille,” I said.
She took a step and the white nightgown caught around her feet. This made her very angry and she gave the gown a sharp tug. She sat down heavily beside me and once again seemed overcome and very small within all that white fabric. She might have remained ill-tempered from tripping in her gown were it not for the fact that she had once again been captivated by the flickering gas jet.
“Is anything wrong, Camille?”
She looked puzzled, as if honestly pondering the question, and then she pulled back the bedcover and slowly stroked the white linen. She smiled. “The sheets are so starched and white... too white.” She looked at me and there was the devil in her eye.
“Come on, now. Are you teasing?�
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“No, I’m quite serious.” She regarded me with a quiver of amusement. She shifted in her nightgown, twisted and leaned toward me a little and as the fabric pulled tighter it revealed the delicate contour of a nipple. Also revealed was the pinkness of the aureole around it, distinct from the hidden white of her breast.
She looked down, slowly rubbed her hand over the nipple, pulling the fabric even a little tighter, and then gazed silently at me. She inched closer and once again became brooding. “... much too white,” she said with a low and contemptuous voice.
And then, just as she was pulling the robe back over my chest, she laughed and pushed my leg off the bed. In a frenzy she tore back the bedcover and began loosening the sheets. As she darted about, her hair seemed especially dark and tangled and parts of her nightgown became translucent in the flickering amber light.
“Camille, what are you doing?” I demanded, but she ignored me. She gathered up the sheets and actually began to leave the room with them.
“Camille!” I shouted. I ran after her.
She fled down the stairs and hesitated at the front door. No, she couldn’t, I thought, overwhelmed by visions of her bursting out into the street, neighbors and passersby aghast—a mad little wraith dressed all in white, holding the bottom of her nightgown in each hand and bundles of bedsheets under each arm. Possessed, like one of the nuns of Loudon. No, she couldn’t, mustn’t!
To my slight relief she glanced at me briefly and then ran to the back door, sprinting out into the garden. She rushed past the dark wet lilacs and I heard the familiar creaking of the stable doors.
That was worse. Did she plan to ride out on a horse?
But when I arrived at the stable I found her engaged in furiously rubbing the crumpled white sheets all over the back of one of the deep brown carriage horses. The animal, a young but gentle stallion, was frightened at being plucked so rudely from his sleep and began to stamp and snort. Camille was delirious.
I wanted to grab hex; but I could not get near her for the rearing horse. Then, just as quickly, she finished and returned to the house. I caught up with her in the entranceway at the base of the stairs. The sheets were dirty and smelled of the stable, resinous and heavy. She flung them out and bit my leg as she pulled me down into the disheveled mass. I was filled with anger and restrained myself from using my strength. The soiled sheets were close around my face and I recoiled, trying to shut out all awareness of the smell, the dense and penetrating smell, but Camille was all about me. Just as I was about to sit up she gently held a single hand, outstretched, against my chest. The white nightgown slipped from her shoulders and she was golden once again in the faint light from the stairs.
III
We had been married a month when I read Camille the Rubáiyát. We did not know it then, but we conceived a child that night. We were much too concerned with other things to suspect it. I was busy fashioning Camille into a proper wife. It took another two months of rigorous drilling to separate the last wheat from the chaff. It is difficult to say how Camille felt about the changes she had to undergo. It was obvious she wanted to live up to my expectations, for she accepted the constant corrections of her speech and manners calmly and courageously, but I sometimes suspected she was enduring more of an inner struggle than she let on. She had lost a little of her effervescence. On occasion her smile seemed just a bit forced. Still, all things considered, she adapted to her new life with amazing facility.
Naturally, London society would never have tolerated such an intrusion of the classes, and so it was necessary to fabricate a mysterious past for Camille. There was a suggestion of a wealthy father dying when she was a child, an invalid and reclusive old aunt, an estate in Yorkshire. It was very simple, really, but quite expectedly Camille was uneasy. When at last the time came for our first social appearance I chose the Lyceum. I knew an evening at the theater would provide only brief opportunity for social contact and give Camille a chance to feel more at ease. Because of my overwhelming love for Camille I could not fathom that anyone would feel any differently. Camille did not share my utter confidence.
The moment we stepped down from the brougham I sensed her prickle. She tried to conceal it. She moved with grace. She smiled just enough, but there was a nervousness in her eyes.
I surveyed the crowd. It was typically genteel. The gentlemen all wore dress coats with black waistcoats, and very narrow, inefficiently tied white ties. There was a profusion of top hats and canes. The women, what few women there were—for society women attending the “legitimate” theater were the exception rather than the rule—all wore billowy evening dresses with very small, tight waists. At a distinct level of the crowd fluttered a handful of fans like so many cabbage butterflies.
I didn’t see anything that should have caused Camille’s apprehension. As we passed through the majestic gilt arcade of the Lyceum and into the lobby I spied one of my professors. He was a man named Hardwicke, Dr. Cletus Hardwicke, a piteous fellow. Polio had twisted his frail and diminutive little form into a most trollish figure. Through his thinning, reddish hair, freckles and age spots dotted his bulbous forehead, and his long, yellowed fingers bulged with veins. In his top hat and suit he looked like old Nick, and so he was in the lecture hall—a hellish professor, as feared for his vitriolic cross-examinations as he was esteemed for his knowledge. There was even a sort of a mystery about him. He always seemed to be up to something, although no one was quite sure what. For stretches of time he would spend every free moment in the library, but he never published, or revealed any fruits of his research. He had a habit of asking sudden odd and personal questions, but it was a credit to his discretion that no one ever apprehended why. On top of everything else, his private life was equally enigmatic. He was always seen gadding about, but never with friends or acquaintances. No one knew how he spent his leisure time.
When he spotted me he nodded and gave a brief smile. Restrained but cordial. When he saw Camille he nodded again. This first hint of acceptance by a stranger from my class calmed her a little, but a host of other worries plagued her. As we sat in our seats I noticed she was still shifting about skittishly and I asked her what was wrong.
“It’s just very new to me,” she said.
I looked around again and although I didn’t notice anyone gazing at us boldly I fancied the eyes of the women in the crowd, and a few of the men glanced our way with more than chance regularity. Was Camille’s paranoia contagious? Were these people really staring at us, or was I just imagining it? I tried to dismiss it, but the feeling persisted. The fans concealed, the monocles glinted, and like frogs nervously peeping out of water, heads turned and quickly looked away.
Why was it, I wondered, a lady of society could never be without her fan? To the Japanese the fan was the symbol of life. The rivet end was the starting point and as the rays expanded, so the road of life widened out Thus fans were decorated with armorial bearings and the totems of families. In some strange way, the history and honor of ponderous generations were represented on those totem fans of the Japanese.
It was at the beginning of the play, a performance of Antony and Cleopatra, that it happened.
Demetrius and Philo had just walked out onstage and as the royal couple approached with their band of eunuch attendants, Philo gave his opening lines. When he finished he gestured at Antony and his Egyptian queen and proclaimed: “The triple pillar of the world transformed into a strumpet’s fool: Behold and see!” With that last line, every paper and ivory fan in the theater snapped shut.
It was a rude interruption, but who could say it wasn’t just a coincidence, that there was a judgment in those fans?
Camille said nothing.
In the days to follow such occurrences continued to happen. An old matron would give a deadly smile. A carriage wheel would come just a bit too close to a puddle. Each time the action was indirect enough we could not be sure whether we were being overly sensitive, or whether somehow society was able to see through our ruse and chos
e to make their condemnations in hostile but subtle ways.
The most forward incident took place just two weeks after our evening at the Lyceum. It was at the reception of an opera singer given by one Lady de Grey in her Georgian home in Belgravia. The reception was the largest social function Camille and I had attended together. I don’t remember the name of the opera singer (she was a massive German woman with hundreds of tiny scarlet ribbon bows encircling her immense white bosom like a wreath around a racehorse). I vividly remember where the reception was held. It was in the conservatory of Lady de Grey’s stately home. Lady de Grey’s conservatory was a sight to behold, a huge glass and white-frame structure like a transparent miniature Gothic cathedral. The floor was of white and black marble with various tiers and fountains and pools inlaid with Florentine mosaic. Aside from a verdant jungle of palms and ferns, one other type of plant dominated the wondrous room, lilies. There were white lilies and moon lilies, and most of all, orange and salmon-colored tiger lilies. Everywhere and everywhere, tiger lilies. Clusters and explosions amid terra-cotta putti and the trickle of a dozen fountains. Tiger lilies.
After the old German opera singer finished shaking the glass with her thundering arias, wispy cricketlike men in black tails quickly clattered the chairs away, and the orchestra turned to lighter music. The rapid strains of a waltz swept through the room and the floor filled with the élégants of London—whaleboned and waistcoated couples spinning stiffly like so many music-box dancers.
Amid this stood Camille.
Camille was a ghost, a small pale vapor of a woman, but in her pale peach evening gown she acquired a powerful and beautiful presence. Her tight-fitting bodice revealed what would later be known as the Edwardian Profile, and years before her time she was not unlike that other Camille, Camille Clifford, the famous Gibson Girl.
The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life Page 2