Shadowplay

by Joseph O'Connor

‘You see I’ve studied electricity,’ Irving attempted. ‘Many said it couldn’t be done. But I knew better.’

  ‘But of course you did, darling, knowing better is your greatest talent; what’s more, it’s brought you so far you daren’t abandon it now. In the fight between Sally and Shakespeare, Sally always wins. She is a trumpet for Shakespeare to blow.’

  ‘I say, you are talking like a character in one of your plays.’

  ‘Oh I don’t think I talk quite as brilliantly as that, mon petit ange, but thank you for the attempt. An insincere compliment is the only laurel worth having.’ Accepting a flute of champagne from a chorus girl, he now turned towards Stoker. ‘Chin chin,’ he said, ‘and how is your writing coming along, old thing? One has such happy memories of when we used to read one another our sestinas over crumpets in the Quad. When shall we see a play from your quill?’

  ‘I’ve rather given up on that front. But here is a copy of a little book of mine you might look over. It was published by a small house last year.’

  ‘Why, how excellent. The Shoulder of Shasta. How deliciously evocative. Do you know, my favourite part of your novels is invariably their titles.’ He quaffed the remains of his drink and rose wincingly to his feet. ‘But now I must away, I have bad associates to fall in with. Thank you for the book, Bram. I shall enjoy taking you to bed with me this evening. Like old times, what?’ Turning to the company, he bowed, tracing a crucifix in the air before him. ‘Well done, children. Reverend Mother is proud of you.’

  The applause as he shuffled off in a cloud of self-assuredness and French cologne was perhaps a little uncertain.

  More wine was summoned. The celebration ran late. Many of the players – the younger ones in particular – had been thrilled by the guest and the mischief he had loosed. To have shared the same stage as the notorious Wilde. If it never happened again, at least it had happened once. His presence was understood by them as an affirmation of their arrival, the appearance of a star over the Lyceum and her people. They did not know how soon the star would fall.

  Perhaps every actor joins the profession out of the desire to one day have a story to tell. Many found theirs that evening. Some of those towards whom he glanced would say he shook their hands. Those few whose hands he shook would say he embraced them. Others would soon deny that he had been there at all.

  Ellen waltzed with Harks, with Stoker, with Irving, then Irving and Stoker waltzed, to the delight of the players. Boys reeled with boys, girls jigged with girls, Irving waltzed with his dog. ‘The Walls of Limerick’ was called for, then a strathspey and sailors’ hornpipes, the orchestra’s violinists joined by several of the stagehands, a Manx fiddler and Cornish piper among them. When the champagne ran dry, a barrel of cider was barrowed in and broken open. Couples were noticed drifting hand-in-hand into the darkness of backstage, or out to the loading dock, even up to the boxes. The night Saint Oscar came to call.

  Dawn had begun to rise by the time the stage emptied, players and squiffy musicians squabbling or spooning or helping each other homeward through the cold. Stoker, a little unsteady, returned from the street, where he had been whistling up cabs and handing out stacks of coins for fares. Downstage, near the wings, Harker was on her knees, shakily lighting a candle.

  ‘Still here, Sergeant Harks? It’s gone five.’

  ‘Doing the ghostlight, sir. Old tradition in the theatre. Always leave one flame burning when it’s time to go home so the ghosts can perform their own plays.’

  ‘Don’t know about that. We don’t want to burn the ruddy place down.’

  ‘Rather I put it out, sir? I shall, if you say so.’

  ‘Oh, dash it all, leave it. We need the ghosts on our side.’

  ‘Night then, Mr Stoker.’

  ‘Night, Harks. Safe home.’

  ‘My crikey, what a knees-up. Shall never forget it.’

  ‘None of us shall. Well done.’

  ‘Didn’t Miss Terry look a picture, sir? Pretty as an orchard. That gown, blow my eyes, she’s like looking at a symphony.’

  ‘She was beautiful, indeed.’

  ‘You’re a little sweet on her, sir, ain’t you? You can tell me your secret.’

  He says nothing.

  ‘I am, too,’ Harks laughs. ‘I think everyone is.’

  ‘Miss Terry is a remarkable woman. We are blessed to be her friends.’

  ‘You know what my old dad used to say about marriage, Mr Stoker? You can look in the jeweller’s window, once you don’t smash and grab.’

  ‘Wise man, your progenitor.’

  ‘Might I ask a favour, sir? I should like to give you something.’

  ‘What is it?’

  She slid herself over the lip of the stage and down into the front stalls, where he was gathering empty bottles into a sack.

  ‘You’re a regular proper diamond, sir. The best I ever met.’ Now on tiptoe, she kissed him on the cheek. ‘If gentlemen was my run of country, I should want you for my own. Since they ain’t, I’ll say thanks for all you done for me.’

  ‘My own dearest Harks.’ He shook her hand, then embraced her. ‘You were a splendidly beautiful boy, now you are a handsome young woman. Most of us will never be either.’

  Bright with smiles, she left. He cleared the final bottle, then sat alone in the second row, enjoying a last glass of claret and a fine Louisiana cigar he wasn’t quite certain how he’d come by. Ripples of ghostlight played against the dark folds of the heavy curtains, the brass of the kettledrums, the glossy pillars of the proscenium. Soon, he would go out and walk the night-markets of Covent Garden, fetch the morning newspapers from that lad on the Strand. It was certain that at least some of them would report on Wilde’s visit. The publicity would be beyond price. A strong night’s work.

  The musicians. The dancing. Wilde’s black teeth. The crackling swords. It would be good to sleep until noon, then to do something honest and manual. There was that trapdoor needing to be fixed, pulleys-and-ropes to be rehung. A tough, sweaty day whanging in nails, tautening bolts. Hard work would wash away the exhaustion.

  In the ghostlight, he dozed. A common dream came to him. He was on stage, naked, the lines of his dialogue tantalisingly close, as though butterflies of words were drifting past. Reaching out, his fingers met water. The audience baying and whistling – although he couldn’t see their faces, he knew Wilde’s was among them. Florence was here, too, he could hear her calling out to him. Suddenly he was falling through space.

  He jolted awake, dry-mouthed. The theatre was quiet. The first bells from St Mary le Strand tolled for seven.

  Stiff, sore, he rose to his feet, uncomfortable in the evening suit he had slept in, shoes too tight, hangover coming, pins-and-needles spangling down a rope of sinew in his aching right thigh. The ghostlight had burned out, plumes of candlesperm hardening on the boards. He found a spoon and began chipping away the cold wax.

  An eerie sound took him. He looked up at the chandelier. A tiny bird, perhaps a wren, was flitting from crystal droplet to droplet, now alighting, now flitting, now lighting again, her glassy, tinkling music like a Japanese orchestra. A spew of her droppings fell. The chirps grew shriller. It seemed to Stoker that she would dash against the ceiling or exhaust herself to death. His powerlessness to help was horrible, he found himself urging the terrified creature, chivvying, beckoning. Suddenly, she swooped towards the parterre, but whirled back roofward again, into the one of the upper boxes. The chirping stopped. She must be safe, or dead.

  Exhausted, he mounted the steps to the stage. As he gathered the last glasses and oyster-knives and tablecloths, a foolishness loomed up at him from the pit like a phantom violinist. Turning, he faced the house.

  Empty velvet tiers subtly gilded in the dawn-light that came streaming from the high dusty windows.

  Was it possible that Wilde’s question to him about playwriting had been more than mockery? Was mockery, if you could read it, the jester’s way of advising? Might he yet stand here one night in the wake of hi
s debut, an audience calling ‘author’ or crying out ‘more’? His son would be here, so would Florence and her people. Perhaps Ellen would play in it.

  Perhaps Ellen …

  If only …

  He seemed to see the headlines, the theatrical notices, his surname splashed across posters. O, wouldn’t that silence them back in Dublin.

  Not Stoker? The little clerkfella? The cripple couldn’t walk? Queer kind of owl, used to haunt the town all night? Sure how could he be famous? We know him!

  Money would rain. Runs in New York and Chicago. The freedom of money, no more scraping and welcoming, no more arguing with cloakroom attendants and worrying about receipts. A townhouse in Kensington, a library for Florence, a manor in the country with a study overlooking a paddock, the life of a literary gentleman turning down endless invitations in measured, well-fashioned phrases. Forgive me, I am occupied with my forthcoming tour and am declining all distractions, even ones as tempting as yours.

  Now he saw in the empty tiers the faces of his parents, the clerks at Dublin Castle – everyone that had ever said no. The crushed hopes, the secrets, the failures would be amended for. That he had ever lived would matter. He would not be forgotten. He would stand on this stage in the furnace of applause, tear-eyed, magnanimously forgiving.

  Come, gentle sleep. Up the staircase he climbed, towards Irving’s quarters, drunk on elated weariness. As he opened the door, the scarlet light of the embers changed to purple. He heard the crackle of coals as they shifted in the grate.

  The three old chesterfield sofas gleamed in the half-light. It struck him that two were unoccupied.

  On the third, in a tangled sheet, Irving and Ellen lay naked, asleep, her head on his chest, their thighs and arms enwrapped, the gloss of his loosed hair spread across a white silken cushion, their clothes strewn like rags on the floor. Firelight the colour of brandy shimmered on her skin.

  Seeming to sense his presence, she opened her eyes.

  ‘Oh,’ she murmured. ‘Bram …. That’s to say …’

  ‘I am sorry,’ he whispered as he left.

  — XVII —

  In which an author murders his books and Desdemona visits an Asylum

  Unfurling with the dust beneath the rafters of her attic, dead Mina witnesses a strange scene.

  Gaunt, weeping, the interloper, on his knees, is ripping up copies of his books. He has a stack of them, the height of his waist, is systematic in the destruction. The covers are jerked back hard, he reefs out the pages.

  The Shoulder of Shasta. What can it mean?

  Pulling open a dirty skylight, he flings the shreds into the air. She darts out and sees them borne away on the wind towards the Thames, handfuls of torn paper blackened by ink, like a murder of crows over Waterloo Bridge.

  In the windows of the theatre at daybreak, she sees red reflections of his dream. The Count pulling a sheet from the heroine’s naked body, unfastening his shirt, running a fingernail down his abdomen, from his navel to his moss, opening his flesh like a fruit. He holds the back of her head, forces her lips to the wound, her hands around his torso as she sucks him.

  Blinking, he now realises he is at the dining table with his wife. The tall clock in the corner bongs quietly, as though apologetic for interrupting the silence.

  ‘It is pleasant,’ she attempts, ‘to have you home for an evening.’

  ‘For me, too.’

  ‘They’re not missing you at the theatre?’

  ‘They can manage one night.’

  The maid comes in with the soup. Silence falls like an anvil. Only after she leaves does the conversation force itself to life again, an ember inflamed by the waft of a closing door.

  ‘Is something on your mind, Bram? You seem a little preoccupied.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I saw your Shasta this afternoon. In Hatchard’s on Piccadilly. The assistant told me they had sold three copies.’

  ‘We are rich.’

  ‘In some ways we are. There are many ways of being rich.’

  ‘There is only one way that matters when the accounts come in.’

  ‘You know that is untrue. At another time, you would say so.’

  ‘I wish it were another time, then. But it seems to be now.’

  ‘To have our son is a great blessing. I see you in him at every moment, in how he laughs when he sings, how he counts on his fingers despite being clever enough not to. And for you and I to have one another, still. I thank God every day. Your kindliness is a great blessing to Nolly and me, your manliness, your hard work. Your decency.’

  ‘What’s brought this on?’

  ‘I have a confession to make, Bram.’

  ‘A confession?’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind. You left your notebook on the hallstand the other morning. I read a little of your new idea. The vampire story.’

  ‘That story is dead. It turned out to be nothing.’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘I burnt it the other night and am glad to be rid of it. Now let us change the subject if you don’t mind.’

  She nods, opens a drawer in the table, produces a clutch of scorched pages.

  ‘Don’t be angry,’ she says. ‘I rescued it. Poor creature. A little frayed around the edges. Still here, though. Like us.’

  His eyes are hot and moist. He accepts the blackened bundle.

  ‘You are the finest, most admirable man I have ever had the honour to know,’ she says.

  When finally he is able to speak, his voice is trembling. ‘I have never been worthy of you, Flo. I am still not, now. The happiness you have given me. To have a family. A home.’

  ‘You are loved the way you are, Bram. I think I understand.’

  ‘Thank you. My treasure. I only hope I am not too late.’

  They return to their starter, the sustenance of many a marriage both in sickness and in health, long spoonfuls of Silence Soup.

  In the darkroom off Bow Street, he and Harks are watching the wizard pour the solution. What happens next is miraculous.

  Irving’s face appears in ghostly negative, then – incredible – in positive, staring out from the shadowland of plate glass. Next to shimmer into being is the frown of Desdemona, haughty, disdainful, queenly. The chemical stench is so strong that the photographer’s eyes are dripping.

  The printer accepts the heavy plates like the precious relics they are, wraps them in thick blankets, carries them with motherly gentleness one by one across the alleyway to his works. Hard to believe that the clattering pistons and whirring cogs won’t smash them or do some lesser violence, but an hour later, as promised, the playbills begin unrolling from the press-drum.

  ‘Oh, sir,’ Harks says. ‘That’s goodnight to the competition.’

  She has arranged for a fleet of slum-boys to be waiting with buckets and paste. The urchins accept their cargo and payment of pennies, steal off, murmuring Stoker’s instructions as they go. ‘Every billboard, every wall. Plenty more where these came from. Don’t stint.’

  Next morning, a crowd of the awestruck gathers outside the theatre.

  In the noticeboards, on the pillars, in the windows of the main doors. Playbills with photographs of the actors.

  Not drawings. Their faces. Twenty inches by ten. Ellen Terry is asking you personally to come to a play. All she wants is five shillings. You’ll be in the same room. The stern Chief is staring through the kernel of your soul. Are you able to resist that command?

  Across the street, Stoker watches. People cluster and point. A constable burbles up, waves his arms for them to move on, but after a moment removes his helmet and stops shooing. He stands, hands on hips, shaking his head in patriotic amazement. Is there anything Britons cannot conquer?

  Stoker crosses, enters the lobby, climbs the brass-railed staircase to the foyer. His bundle of keys is heavy. There is much to be done.

  By the drinking-fountain, Desdemona is waiting, in a muslin dress and cartwheel hat.

  ‘I’ve not seen you in a w
hile, Bram. You are plastering London with me. I am become wallpaper.’

  He nods, goes to unlock the auditorium doors. ‘Things have been busy. And I have been spending time at home.’

  ‘I have something small for your birthday. It’s today, isn’t it?’

  He had forgotten.

  Rising, she approaches, hands him a leather-bound notebook.

  ‘I thought you might fill it with your beautiful words.’

  ‘That is all in the past.’

  ‘Don’t speak like that, Dull. Why so cross?’

  ‘If you will excuse me, I have rather a full plate this morning.’

  ‘I went to a seance,’ she says. ‘Out of curiosity, nothing more. The medium told me I know a man who will one day write a story that will stop the world on its track. Published in hundreds of languages. Whose hero will be unextinguishable.’

  ‘I don’t hold with such nonsense.’

  ‘Interesting, all the same.’

  ‘I imagine she was speaking of Shaw.’

  ‘Why would you assume “she”?’

  ‘I gave the matter no thought.’

  ‘Bram, about the night of Wilde’s visit—’

  ‘That is none of my affair.’

  ‘If I gave you the impression that you and I could be more than a friendship, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to. I am so madly fond of you, perhaps I slipped.’

  ‘You didn’t. And if you had, it would be very wrong of me to have given in to the feelings you describe. I am married.’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know?’

  ‘So is he.’

  ‘So am I.’

  Harks and three of the younger players hurry through the lobby, making for rehearsal. A crowd is forming at the lattice of the Box Office.

  ‘I should attend to my work,’ Stoker says.

  ‘Do you hate me?’

  ‘How could I?’

  ‘But do you?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘The friendship I have with you will outlast everything else. I knew it the moment we met. And I know it, to this day.’

  She is clench-lipped as he holds her. The embrace is noted by some in the Box Office queue who nudge one another and point.