Chapter Fifty-Nine
It was a late afternoon in December. I’d spent the day with Lucy and Nancy at an exhibition of Henry Moore’s works at the Warren Gallery.
Afterwards, we’d had tea and cake at a delightful place in Oxford Street before I returned home exhausted.
First warming my hands by the fire, I slumped into my chair, looking at the empty place on the settee where Moonbeam used to lie.
It had been a few months since she died.
Vera kept urging me to get another dog. I was tempted, but my heart was still too sore.
Dogs brought such happiness, but their loss was more than I could bear.
I reached for my handkerchief and dabbed my eyes, then pulled a blanket over my knees.
Sleet teased the window. Distant prattle, the grate of wheels, occasionally muffled as they passed through drifts, the rumble and smells of civilisation even as winter almost suffocated them, surrounded me.
From the look of the lowering, steel-grey sky, heavy snow was on its way again.
I would ask Vera to ensure the man who kept the paths clear also did the back steps.
I’d almost fallen down them two weeks ago.
If I hadn’t grabbed a hold of the railing, I’d be like my neighbour, poor Mrs Adamson, and abandoned in a nursing home for Christmas.
I thought back to my first Christmas in London and how overwhelmed I’d been by its vastness, its network of streets, its squashed terraces and grand old houses separated by swathes of green.
Back then, they’d been gowned in white – a filthy slate-speckled white, to be precise.
The greenery was still there, but over the years, the city had risen around me, growing taller and casting long shadows over the older buildings, dwarfing the past. The lazy brown river that rose and fell with the tides, froze near its banks, and always, always smelled, was a constant, only now it was spanned many times.
If I listened hard enough, I was certain I could hear the growl and screech of trains crawling beneath the city like mechanical worms. I sighed.
So much had changed. And not just in and around London.
I’d be spending Yuletide with Noel, Neelie and Ann.
It would be a quiet gathering, so different to the raucous ones back in the day in Dublin, filled with blether and cartloads of children.
Or those Bram and I enjoyed at the Lyceum, often in the Beefsteak Room, where Henry, in a lavish display of generosity, would provide golden roasted turkeys, glistening fattened geese, crunchy roasted potatoes, enormous Yorkshire puddings, tureens of unctuous gravy, plum puddings that oozed whisky and sherry, and all the other trappings for company members and invited guests.
We’d drink, dance, laugh, reenact scenes from plays, relive missed cues and on-stage mishaps, imitate prominent members of the audience, and each other, falling about laughing and crying Encore! Encore!
Now I was the excess guest, the extra family member. The elder. Not really welcome but not unwelcome either. I was a responsibility. When had that happened? When had I gone from being on everyone’s invitation list to ‘we should invite her’?
I released a long, self-pitying sigh just as I spied a mother with three heavily coated children alighting from a cab and entering the shop opposite.
I sat up and pulled back the curtain to see better.
A man with a thick scarf snaked around his neck was walking his large dog, waiting patiently while it pissed against a lamppost. A pair of men in fine hats were busy watching two oblivious women in coats that swept their ankles eating hot chestnuts and licking their fingers.
Part of me envied young women today who could be so free with their choices.
I’d see them striding to or from work in their neat skirts and buttoned jackets, crossing streets singly or in pairs, the cloche hats that were now so fashionable perched on cropped hair that, just a decade ago would have been deemed far too masculine a style for a real woman to wear.
Only, these were real women: canny, clever, with ambitions and dreams they might even be able to fulfil – until they wed, that is.
Marriage might be delayed for some, but it was still a woman’s best hope for a legitimate place in society, no matter who or what her husband.
Women might be able to vote now the Equal Franchise Act had been passed, providing they were over twenty-one, but snaring a husband was still a woman’s supreme goal.
I’d been raised to believe it was mine. To think, there were those who declared a new age of equity had been reached.
Equity was different to equality. I was less convinced, knowing any gains my sex achieved would not only come at a cost but be resisted by men who felt threatened by female autonomy.
The proof was in the wedding. Men didn’t have to be married to be taken seriously.
But an unmarried woman of a certain age?
As for older women, well, they were little more than a nuisance.
Too old to breed, not attractive enough to be ornamental, they took up space and time.
I wondered what Bram would think about all this female emancipation.
Clothing, hairstyles and habits reflected women’s new freedoms. Noel was supportive of them, but then his wife was well beyond the age to dress like a flapper and smoke, seek employment or to assert any other rights her new political status gave her.
He could safely align himself with women without being regarded a traitor to his own sex.
A part of me was grateful other, younger minds and hearts were taking on the men’s club that ruled us all.
While I might be too old to broadcast my liberty with short hair or modern dress, I was taking it up to the men.
They might label me a ‘battleaxe’ or an ‘old witch’, and worse, but who else was going to care?
That’s one thing I learned from the new women of today: if you don’t value your rights, no-one else will.
I continued to fight for Bram’s works, but it had taken its toll. What was the point of agreements, contracts, lawyers, negotiations, agents and societies if legal documents weren’t honoured, and in a timely fashion?
I drained the whisky and looked at the pile of letters awaiting my attention.
Turning the lamp to its brightest setting, I picked up the magnifying glass.
Most were bills, though I was pleased to see a letter from Violet – an invitation by the looks of it – and a nice thick letter from Phil.
But then another drew my attention. It wasn’t sealed very well, and I could spy what appeared to be a press cutting jutting out. I quickly opened it.
I must have exclaimed loudly, because Vera materialised at the door. ‘Is everything alright, missus?’ she asked.
I fell back in the chair and waved a careless arm towards her.
‘Read this newspaper clipping.’ I passed it to her.
‘It says not only has the Film Society here in London shown Nosferatu to all their members, but they were given permission by Universal Studios in America to do so. According to this, Universal Studios own the bloody film.’
Ellen had promised me the Society would never show the film again unless the rights were sorted.
With her gone now, there was no-one to hold Mr Montagu and the board to account.
Sorrow welled in my chest. Dead at the ripe old age of eighty-one of a brain bleed.
God, my heart still pained me. What would she say about all this?
Laugh and remind me, ‘Know thine enemy, Lemon!’
Vera quickly examined the cutting. She patted my shoulder reassuringly. ‘You left out the best bit.’
‘What bit?’ I said, basking in loving memories of my friend.
‘The bit that says you were paid fifty thousand pounds for the rights.’
‘What?’ I snatched it back, used the magnifier again.
‘Well, that’s a load of poppycock, isn’t it?
I haven’t received a single penny. And did you see this?
Some German at Universal Studios is telling all and sundry, including the Film Society, he’s bought the rights to Dracula.
Look!’ I placed the cutting on the side table and skewered the relevant part with my finger.
‘The studio is going to make a blasted film – with sound as well – based on my husband’s book.
The gall of these men. It’s infuriating! ’
Tears began to well. I couldn’t cry. I wouldn’t.
Here was everything I’d dreamed of, for Bram, for myself, for Dracula, only it was happening without my knowledge, without my permission, without me having any say in it whatsoever, let alone being paid.
It was as if I didn’t exist. As if Bram, the man who wrote the damn story, didn’t either.
Once again, my rights were being dismissed by the Germans, this time in league with the Americans. And let’s not forget the British Film Society. Where was Mr Bang or Mr Thring when I needed them?
‘They’re not taking Dracula from me again, Vera,’ I vowed, rising and beginning to pace the room.
‘It’ll be alright, Mrs Stoker. You’ll sort ’em,’ Vera said, stepping out of my way.
I halted and stared at her through eyes awash with watery fury. I sniffed and straightened. I was still tall, and Vera was so very tiny. For some reason, my stature gave me a feeling of power, especially if I ignored the ache in my hips and my diminishing vision.
‘What can I do?’ Vera asked, rubbing her hands together.
‘The first thing you can do is call Mr Thring.’ I glanced towards the window. Daylight was retreating. ‘Make an appointment for me to see him tomorrow. Tell him I won’t take no for an answer.’
‘Yes, missus,’ said Vera. She turned to go.
‘And tell him that Nosferatu has escaped once more.’
Vera’s eyes widened, then she grinned and scurried off. I heard her lift the receiver in the hall.
The streetlights cast a faint glow. The people outside were nothing more than fleeting shadows, dodging the snow that fell more heavily by the second.
A chorus of birds rose from a nearby church, some winging their way south.
They could almost be bats, the shape of their wings distorted by the growing dusk and flurries.
I could imagine the howl of a wolf, the plaintive cry of a babe.
I picked up the cutting and stared at it balefully. ‘You think you’re safe making such outrageous claims over there in Hollywood, do you, gentlemen? Well, you haven’t accounted for Mrs Dracula.’
Instead of placating or even dismissing my concerns, Mr Thring was, much to my surprise and glee, outraged.
I’d arrived for my appointment on time and clearly and concisely presented my case and the evidence.
Mr Thring had taken a minute or so to read the offending article, consider the ramifications, then leapt into action.
He marched about the office, arms waving, voice raised. Work in the outer room momentarily ceased and I glanced around to see his secretary, mouth agog, and a couple of the young men half-standing, peering over their dividers to see what all the commotion was about.
Gratified by his reaction, I waited until he returned to his chair. Immediately, he ordered his secretary to get Mr Montagu of the Film Society on the phone and began making notes. After a while, when he didn’t lift his head or offer an explanation, I wondered if he’d forgotten I was there.
A good hour passed. A few more phone calls were made, one of which he took outside his office, leaving me with the cup of very nice tea Miss Chandler brought me.
‘Do you know what’s going on?’ I asked her.
She gave me a wistful smile. ‘Mr Thring doesn’t like me to talk about Society business, Mrs Stoker but —’ she said hastily, just as I was about to remind her I was a member, ‘I do know he’s spoken to Mr Montagu and a representative of Universal Studios who’s based here in England.’
‘Oh.’
At times, Mr Thring’s voice carried. ‘I don’t care whether the performance was public or private. Universal do not own the rights to Nosferatu or Dracula. Mrs Stoker does. No person, or society, can retain a film that’s in infringement of copyright … You, sir, are in breach of the law.’
For the first time in our fraught history, I felt Mr Thring and the British Society of Authors truly had my best interests at heart. We were finally on the same side in this eternal war.
An urgent meeting was held between me, Mr Montagu, Mr Thring and the Society’s London lawyer.
The upshot was that after pressure from lawyers, the gentleman behind the claim I’d sold the rights to Dracula to an American film studio admitted that they’d never been granted.
This meant that the copy of Nosferatu the Film Society had purchased for screening was obtained illegally.
Mr Montagu, the Film Society’s president, handed over the positive print in their possession a month later.
It was given to the Society’s lawyer to dispose of.
What happened to that specific copy, I never discovered, but not long after, much to my dismay, Nosferatu was screened in Europe and America.
While I could have taken legal action against Universal Studios, not only did I not want to risk alienating them, but an expensive lawsuit was well beyond my means.
Then another matter was brought to my attention that forced everything else aside and required a speedy resolution.
I learned that Mr Bang, my agent and a man I’d trusted to have my best interests at heart, had been very liberally feathering his own nest. Taking over twenty-five per cent commission on all my earnings – far more than originally negotiated – he’d been at it for years.
So, without a tremor of remorse, I fired him.
Mrs Dracula bites again.