Chapter Thirty-Six
Bram poured us both a drink in preparation for bringing this wild, unnatural story to its conclusion.
I peeped through the curtains and saw the moon was obstructed by angry clouds that roiled and transmuted into eerie shapes.
At least half the streetlights weren’t working, plunging the road into gloom.
Thick fog curled and drifted, obscuring then revealing the few cabs and folk foolish enough to be abroad this wretched night.
I shuddered and drew the curtains tightly.
‘Ready, Florrie?’ asked Bram.
We assumed our usual places. Me, curled up in a chair, wrapped tightly in a blanket with my feet tucked under me, Bram with two lamps nearby so he could see the pages clearly.
The fire crackled, throwing macabre silhouettes against the walls, turning Bram’s face into a landscape of crags and gullies.
I was relieved the tale was almost over.
I’d scarce slept since Bram had begun his reading, my dreams filled with skeletal men with long fingers, hairy palms and elongated teeth.
Full red lips whispered in my dream-ears, fangs gnashed, blood flowed, and moans and screams both terrifying and carnal taunted my unsettled psyche.
A part of me wished to hear no more of this benighted tale. The stronger, braver, part of me had to know how it ended.
With a fortifying sip of wine, Bram picked up from where he’d left off the night before: with the brutal death by unseen hands of Count Dracula’s factotum, the suborned and somehow possessed Renfield.
As Bram resumed, it was as if mother nature unleashed a protest against such a malevolent tale.
Volleys of rain thrashed the windows, the wind howled and shrieked, shaking the glass.
Beyond the drawing room, the floors creaked, and the walls shivered as if to expel unwelcome guests.
The clock in the hallway chimed erratically.
With every page, the horror that had lodged inside my chest from the very beginning grew until I was filled with such dread, it was as if a huge sword hovered over me, threatening to skewer my soul.
I was transfixed, scared to move. It was difficult to draw breath.
My heart beat with alarming rapidity. The warmth of the fire, the blanket I clutched, didn’t touch me.
I was bitterly cold yet also somehow febrile as I journeyed alongside the courageous Crew of Light through the snow-bound Carpathian wilderness, fending off vampires and wolves, tracking the wagon that carried the coffined count back to his castle while the sun sank behind jagged mountains, towering silhouettes against a vermillion sky.
The climax of the story drew closer, Bram increasing the pace as, at last, the Crew of Light forced the cart with its cursed load to halt. Leaping aboard, the brave men prised the lid of the coffin away.
I was on the edge of the chair, a fist pressed to my mouth.
‘I saw the count lying within the box upon the earth,’ read Bram. ‘He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the horrible vindictive look which I knew too well.’ He paused. ‘As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph.
‘But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan’s great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat; whilst at the same moment Mr Morris’s bowie knife plunged into the heart.’
The count’s body turned to dust, vanishing as motes into the darkness.
The story ended.
The world was hushed.
I could neither speak nor move. I was completely untethered.
Dire thoughts invaded my imagination, evil and foreboding.
Dear God. I resisted the overpowering urge to cross myself.
I wished I’d a Catholic icon to protect me – a relic, the gold crucifix Oscar had once gifted me, the host, anything.
But a crucifix hadn’t saved the captain of the Demeter in the Whitby harbour chapter, had it?
I could scarce believe that my husband, the man who wrote children’s fairytales, albeit dark, and adventure, mystery and romance novels, had penned this.
This was something else. I was reminded of the fear that held the city to ransom during the Jack the Ripper years and knew this vampire tale would arouse the same type of anxiety.
Once this book was published, London would never be the same again.
Bram waited for me to break the heavy silence.
Did I tell him that though my mind spun in all sorts of horrendous directions as he read, conjuring creatures and happenings that had no place in a modern drawing room, there were sections, scenes, that beckoned me into other places?
They stirred something deep within me, fires I’d believed quenched long ago.
I’d been filled with disturbing heat and ribbons of pleasure; feelings of such longing as I imagined sharp teeth against my neck, being entangled in bedclothes, sharing such passion.
The three women crawling over Jonathan Harker, the count telling them, ‘This man belongs to me!’ was so shocking in what it suggested, yet shamefully thrilling too.
To think my Bram wrote something so … so sensuous. So visceral.
If Poor O was condemned for writing Dorian Gray, how might judgement fall upon Bram? Would The Un-Dead be regarded as a dangerous, morally repugnant book too?
And yet, for all the darkness, the erotic and taboo, the ghoulish and evil, he offered Christian hope and light.
But hadn’t Oscar also done that? Then again, Dorian had willingly made a pact with the devil.
Count Dracula was the devil, and the characters Bram invented, Dr Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, Dr Seward, Quincy Morris, Lord Godalming, Lucy and Mina, were either suborned and controlled like Mr Renfield and the crew of the Demeter or did God’s work by setting out to destroy him.
I would say all this to Bram, tell him I was amazed and awed, afraid, too, and not just of the count. But not tonight, not until I’d calmed my mind. I took a deep breath.
‘You’ve changed some of the characters’ names,’ I said finally, reaching for my wine which, apart from a few fraught sips earlier, had sat untouched for hours.
My hands shook, so I swiftly put the glass back down.
Bram rose and refreshed my drink, topping up his own. ‘I did.’ His voice was husky from reading for so long.
First steadying my hand, I raised my glass to him. ‘I … I think the new names work wonderfully well. I think all the characters do. They’re very believable, even within such a disturbing and unlikely tale.’
‘You found it disturbing?’
‘Very.’ I gulped my wine.
‘And unlikely?’
‘Well.’ I gave a shaky laugh. ‘Of course. Vampires … creatures who drink blood, don’t exist, do they?
Nor shapeshifters.’ I thought about the actors at the Lyceum, the Adelphi, the Haymarket, the Savoy and the Royal.
Weren’t they all shapeshifters? Donning costumes and becoming someone else?
Why, at times women became men – and vice versa.
Didn’t that make us all shapeshifters? Adopting a guise to suit the occasion?
Hiding our real selves from the world, wearing masks and elaborate costumes, assuming socially acceptable behaviours to pass as one thing in a world that didn’t allow us to be anything else.
I thought of Oscar, his defiance and the cost, and studied Bram beneath my lashes.
I cleared my throat. ‘I meant unlikely in the sense you portray them in the novel. The notion that someone can control another, take over their life, drain them of their will – that I do not find improbable.’ He averted his gaze.
‘It’s the means that makes it uncanny. The blood drinking, it’s a metaphor for stealing someone’s soul, isn’t it? ’
‘Possibly,’ said Bram, holding his claret aloft so it caught the light.
‘But the actions the characters take, the good ones,’ I continued, ‘are so noble. The way the men band together to save Mina; even the awful choice they must make about Lucy … you’ve made their actions honourable, godly even.’
‘What about Dracula? What did you think of him?’
My glass suddenly appeared to be filled with blood.
I put it down hastily. ‘I … I thought him …’ What did I say?
He was Henry Irving to me, with dashes of the explorer Arminius Vambéry, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Lord Tennyson and even his beloved Walt Whitman, an inkling of Svengali, but also my own damn spectre.
Bram was a bowerbird, always borrowing from our life – the living and the dead. ‘Deserving of his end.’
I forced myself to drink the wine. Blood is life.
‘Thank you, Florrie.’ He gave a weary smile that swiftly left his eyes.
‘I know I’ve still work to do. Reading aloud has enabled me to see its flaws, where I need to make some changes.
Once they’re done, I’ll take it to Constable; he’s keen to publish it.
Hopefully, The Un-Dead will appear later this year.
’ He stretched out his legs. ‘Do you realise it will be my fifth book – sixth if you count the serialisation of The Snake’s Pass? ’
I made a suitable sound. So much output, and yet you’re still known almost exclusively as Henry Irving’s menial, I thought, maybe unfairly.
‘If I might make one suggestion?’ I was hesitant to criticise. I knew how hard Bram had toiled, sacrificed so much, working over holidays in Cruden Bay, when we were in Whitby, and every spare moment here in St Leonard’s Terrace.
‘Tell me. You’ve always offered sage advice with my other books, why should this one be any different?’
Sage advice that wasn’t always followed.
I sat forward. ‘I think you should change the title.’
‘Change it?’ Bram looked astonished. ‘But it has been The Un-Dead since I first conceived it. It’s what the entire story hinges on.’
‘I know, my dear, and that’s why I was reluctant to say anything. It’s just that “The Un-Dead” is so …’ I crinkled my nose.
‘What?’ He had that tone.
I knew enough writers by now to know though they claimed to be able to take criticism from loved ones and even encouraged it, they were like the finest porcelain and liable to crack or even break if it was offered. I trod very carefully.
‘The count is such a strong presence, even though he hardly appears.’ I paused until Bram looked at me.
‘Actually, it’s his absence that makes him such a powerful entity.
Even when he’s not there, he haunts the pages.
The reader will always be anticipating his arrival and the ominous consequences he brings in his wake. ’
God, I knew that feeling.
‘What do you think it should be called then?’ Bram sniffed, then picked up the poker and stabbed the coals a few times.
‘I think it should be called Dracula. Not Count, just Dracula.’
Bram replaced the poker and swung around. ‘Dracula.’ He pulled a face. ‘The name raises more questions than it answers.’
‘Exactly. As you said yourself, years ago in Whitby. It’s such a strong, interesting word. Foreign, odd. It will make people curious. Didn’t you say it meant “devil”?’
Bram gave a dry laugh. ‘Among other things, from what I can gather. Though I don’t see how placing it on the cover will sell the book.’
‘But you won’t have “devil” there, will you? You’ll have a word that arouses curiosity. Surely, that’s exactly what you want to evoke in a potential reader.’
Bram arched a brow. ‘Well, thank you, Florrie. I’ll think about it.
’ Which meant he wouldn’t give it another thought.
‘Forgive me.’ He pushed his hair back from his forehead.
He looked old tonight, as if the reading had drained his vitality.
In that moment, I saw my husband’s mortality.
My heart lurched. ‘I’m completely exhausted; I’m going to retire. ’
I pulled the blanket off my shoulders and folded it. ‘I will too.’ I stood, picking up a lamp. ‘It’s very late.’ I glanced at the clock. Where had the time gone?
Taking another lamp, he gestured for me to precede him.
‘It’s very good, Bram. Truly. I think you’ve written something special.
’ I thought back to the conversation I’d had with Lucy and Violet about books as we went to the train station.
‘Something that those who love Mr Wells, the Brontes, Mrs Shelley, Mr Verne and even Mr Du Maurier’s efforts will appreciate. ’
Bram’s face fell.
He opened the door and stepped into the gloomy hall. It was bitterly cold. Nightmares had taken up residence. My lamp guttered and almost went out.
‘I hope one day, Florrie,’ said Bram, leaning wearily against the doorframe, ‘there’ll come a time when I’ll be the literary touchstone by which new works are judged.’
Before I could respond, he placed a fleeting kiss on my forehead and went to his bedroom.
I waited until he had shut the door before I released a long, weary sigh. Were all men seeking immortality through their work? Were they so greedy that their lives, their families and friends, were never enough?