Moon Rising

by Ann Victoria Roberts

  I winced and squirmed at the staking of poor Lucy, wondering who the life-model could have been for that light, flirtatious girl. Unable to make up her mind which of her many suitors to choose, she paid for it with her life. Was it Florence with all her admirers? Was she the tease, the one who infuriated him, the one Bram really wanted to hammer into the ground?

  The other girl, Mina, was a different and far more complex figure. As a representative of New Womanhood, she should, I felt, have had my approval; but she was too good to be entirely true, more like some wished-for mother-sister-wife, pure, sensible and innately good. But distinctly untouchable. The only time I was able to sympathise with Mina, really put myself in her place, was after she married Jonathan Harker – when the Count came and took her while her husband lay sleeping beside them. Not only fed from her, but held her face to his breast and made her feed from him. That was real. That was shocking. That was something I could recognise.

  The air in the room was warm, but I shivered under my shawl, and did not put out the lamp until I was certain the sun was up.

  ~~~

  The brilliance of the novel made me want to write to him at once. His depiction of Whitby was so clear I found myself choked with longing, for the place, for the time we’d been happy there – even, painfully, for him. Surely Bram could not have written so well unless his memories were as deeply-etched as mine. Such thoughts were almost my undoing. I had to remind myself that more than a decade had passed since he and I had been in Whitby together, that he had used me, and used me badly, before obeying Irving’s command to return to the Lyceum. Since then, we’d become different people leading different lives.

  Even so, I had to force myself to the office that day, to surround myself with work lest I give way to temptation. I found it necessary to count my advantages, to remind myself of all the good things Henry and I shared. None of it was worth risking. Not even for an extraordinary piece of fiction.

  Amongst all the questions that sprang to mind, one that kept recurring was to do with Jonathan. I could not help wondering why Bram had used that name – even the surname, Harker, was so close to Markway I felt it was deliberate.

  To my knowledge they’d never met, and yet the physical description was close enough to make me wonder. Like the matter of Hampstead and Lucy’s tomb; like the journey Henry and I had made through central Europe – there were so many similarities it seemed uncanny.

  Or was Bram merely fulfilling a fantasy begun in Whitby eleven years previously? Talk of a young man he’d never met, shipwrecks and folk-tales, strange stories woven around a tomb on the cliff – it was a fantasy based on memory.

  I read Dracula again, and with the second reading found myself even more aware and much disturbed by those echoes from the past. Red lips, white teeth – kisses, blood, sensuality, a sense of excitement and fear – most of all I was disturbed by a sense of possession, with the exchange and mingling of blood. Not just latterly, in that darkly erotic scene between Mina and the Count, but earlier, with the transfusions, when Van Helsing was trying to save Lucy’s life, when the men who had courted Lucy, and with whom she had flirted so outrageously in the beginning, were invited to take turns to donate their blood to her.

  At that, I felt a shocking sense of licence, as though Bram had allowed each of these men to possess Lucy. Perhaps my response was not what was intended, but I could not help remembering Bram’s belief that the mingling of blood was more truly binding than any marriage, that it made two people one in a way that was eternal and indissoluble.

  As once before, in Whitby, I had a sense of desire and fantasy being played out on the page. Once the Count had lost the whiteness of age and took on the appearance of a younger man, he reminded me most strongly of Irving. I could sense his presence in the background, like that of Irving that day at the cottage, when I saw him moving through the shadows. The truth was hidden by veils and shrouded in darkness, yet Bram had painted a portrait of great power and ruthlessness: a character both urbane and menacing. Irving could have portrayed him to perfection.

  Eventually, when I’d distanced myself a little from the shock of it, I wondered whether that was part of the idea: to dramatise the novel and have Irving play the vampire on stage. If so, there were some subtle ironies involved, but it pleased me to think of Bram being aware of them, utilising them, taking a form of revenge in print for the use that had been made of him.

  If anything, the insights gained by that second reading were even more disturbing, but they were more of the mind than the emotions, and thus more controllable. So I did not write, but endeavoured instead to retain my poise while searching for published reviews. I felt naked, exposed, more than a little afraid of what I might find, and wondered tremblingly how Bram must feel, awaiting a professional response to his book. What would people think? Would they see what I saw, or were my eyes keener because of what we’d been to each other, and what I knew of him?

  ~~~

  The reviews I found were mostly favourable, too bland to be aware of any secret undercurrents, which in one way was an enormous relief. But none expressed the level of enthusiasm I felt the novel deserved, and it was difficult to contain my sense of indignation.

  Henry, whose usual reading was more in the nature of history, or travel and exploration, was bemused by what he termed this new fad of mine. Novels were not to his taste, but he wanted to know what it was about this book that had so caught my attention. It was impossible for me to reveal what I knew of the background – or, indeed, that I was personally acquainted with the author – so I had to let him read my copy and accept his opinion without too many questions or protests. He thought the book original, and liked the bits about Whitby, but did not care for the style of presentation – he said it read too much like a series of grotesque events, which, had it not been for the Whitechapel murders of a few years before, he would have found totally unbelievable.

  That was an alarming new slant, one I’d not considered. The murders had occurred a couple of years before we were married, and the murderer, still uncaught, had been styled ‘Jack the Ripper’ by the popular press. Suddenly I wondered whether he too had played his part in the conception of Bram’s novel, if Dracula and the character of the Count were some kind of fantastical explanation for what had happened. But there had been so many rumours at the time, I even wondered whether, with his social connections, Bram might have been privy to secret information about those murders in Whitechapel in ‘88.

  Forty

  The period which followed was unsettling. I made some expensive mistakes that summer, which Henry had to underwrite; then old Mrs Addison died in November, which necessitated a sad journey to Hull. She’d been a kind and generous woman who celebrated life through her friends and family, and Henry and I were both upset by her death. Our dealings with the Addison brothers went on much as before, but I was very much aware of her absence. I’d been fond of her; she’d been a woman I liked and respected, someone who’d done many of the things I wanted to do, and could therefore be relied upon to offer encouragement rather than pursed lips. I knew I would miss her.

  Just before Christmas, I heard Bella was up before the magistrates again. As a persistent offender she was not fined this time, but sentenced to fourteen days, and there was nothing I could do to help. I kept imagining her in some cold cell on Christmas Day, eating thin prison fare, while in Hampstead we feasted on roast goose and apple sauce. More accurately, I should say roast goose was on the table – I was too distracted to eat much, and Henry was irritated by my mood, so it was a somewhat miserable holiday.

  The New Year did not begin well, either. Severe weather in home trade waters sent costs spiralling upwards, while news of floods and shipwrecks increased the sense of gloom. By mid-February, when things were beginning to improve on the shipping front, the papers were full of a fresh disaster, but fortunately one that involved no loss of life.

  In the early hours of the morning a massive fire had broken out in Southwark, beneat
h the brick arches of the Chatham and Dover Railway. Stored there was almost all the scenery which had been used by the Lyceum Theatre in the previous twenty years.

  According to the first reports, the Lyceum’s business manager, Mr Bram Stoker, had arrived post haste from his home in Chelsea, after being summoned by the police. On that dank, miserable morning, the scene was reputedly chaotic, with the narrow street blocked by fire engines. All were pumping away at the inferno, trying to contain flames which were threatening neighbouring property as well as the railway lines above. The heat was scorching, the report went on; yet Mr Stoker seemed anxious to get as close as possible, and had to be discouraged by the police.

  He was quoted next day as being deeply shocked, finding it impossible to take in the scale of the loss. Yes, they were insured to a certain extent, but the cost of the property was nothing compared to the real loss, that of the time, labour and artistic endeavour which had gone into their creation. Forty-four plays, and twenty-two of those had been great productions – all the scene painters in England, he claimed, working for a whole year, could not restore the scenery alone. The cost to Sir Henry Irving was even greater than that – the bulk of his repertoire was lost.

  Reading all the reports again, I hardly knew whether to cheer or cry. I remembered Bram telling me all those years before that major productions were hugely expensive to stage, and that when a play closed after a long run, the scenery was invariably stored against future requirements. In that way, popular draws could be set up again at short notice and no extra cost. They were an extremely important part of an actor-manager’s stock-in-trade. They were, in fact, his life-blood. Without them, he was finished.

  ~~~

  I should have been ready to gloat. Part of me wanted to, but I couldn’t. I kept thinking of Bram and the ending of his novel; and somehow, because I’d identified Irving with the Count, I felt the destruction of one was connected to the mortal blow delivered to the other. It was a distinctly uncomfortable thought, which then made me wonder whether this catastrophe was entirely accidental. Such suspicions did not make for restful nights, and I found myself examining every report twice over, as though secrets were hidden in the newsprint like invisible writing, and might suddenly appear by firelight.

  I worried what might happen next. I was certain Irving was ruined, both financially and as an actor; but if so, Bram would be without a regular income. Recalling Florence’s spendthrift ways, I hoped he could earn enough from his writing to keep them both.

  There were reports that Irving was ill and tours were being cancelled; worse, the railway company was suing for compensation for fire-damage done to its lines. Eager to know what was going on, in the months that followed I kept my eyes and ears open for news.

  That summer of ‘98 the theatre was sold to a consortium, which seemed to indicate that Irving was indeed in trouble, and yet he continued to perform there. As the months became a year, then two, with tours of America and the British provinces apparently going on as before, I assumed they’d found other backers and were surviving.

  But by the autumn of ‘99, I had enough to worry about on my own account. War had broken out in South Africa and we were barely able to handle the work it generated. After so many years of industrial and agricultural depression, in which we’d often struggled to find cargoes for the space available, with the war we found ourselves frantically looking for ships to provide transportation for the vast volume of goods and men going overseas.

  As the century ended and turned into a new one, we were almost too concerned to notice. Financially we did well, but by the time the war was over, so many things had changed. The old Queen had died, and we had a new King who was hardly young; my Henry was fifty-seven and seemed to have aged a great deal, whereas I was barely thirty-five years old and stimulated by survival and success.

  I felt I was still advancing, still achieving, that at long last I knew what I was doing. My chief regret was that I could not breach the defences of the Baltic Exchange. Henry’s was the name, so I had to rely on him. He was passing much of the work to me, but while I didn’t mind that, I did mind what I saw as the regression of our marriage. Somehow, he and I had slipped into a limbo of predictability, in which we rose, breakfasted, travelled to the office, parted, met for luncheon, discussed business matters, wrote reports, sent telegraph messages and returned home again. That was our life together: a business partnership. A life I’d fought for. I had no right to complain.

  But words and feelings left unexpressed have a habit of either festering or dying, and although I tried to pretend that nothing had changed, in my heart I was lonely and unhappy. My days were full but there was an emptiness growing inside me that was not satisfied either by Henry or by a social life with Henry’s friends.

  The men had grown used to my business acumen and treated me rather like an honorary man at table, but the women still regarded me as an object of curiosity, or worse, with suspicion, as though my interests were merely a new way of seducing the opposite sex. Henry said it was because I was still young and attractive, that if I’d lost my looks or been cursed with a face like a horse, they wouldn’t have minded so much; but I said it wouldn’t have made any difference, since women who had brains but no looks to speak of were generally pitied, which was just as bad. Pity didn’t make for friendship either.

  In truth, I had neither time nor interests in common with the wives of Henry’s friends. Apart from their children, the younger ones gossiped about parties and the latest fashions; the ones of my own age discussed homes and servants and their husbands’ achievements, while the older ones whispered in martyred tones of their ailments. I was hopeless on any of these topics. I liked clothes but not enough to be fashionable, and I had no time for a house in the country. I had no children to brag or complain about, and was not yet of an age, thank God, where health was my sole obsession. I would have liked to enthuse about the building of a new steamship on the Tyne, the excitement of seeing a keel laid, of watching all those men working steadily, busily, competently at a great undertaking. I would have liked to describe my latest journey to St Petersburg, and that sense of trouble seething beneath the gloss and glitter; I would have liked to say...

  But what was the use? Not even Henry understood my enthusiasms any more. I would have liked to be honest with him, to say that it was not purely for reasons of business that I travelled abroad, but because I needed to get away, it was essential to my sense of self, to cure the feeling of weight and suffocation that home and work sometimes engendered. But perhaps he knew that anyway; perhaps that was why he made no objections.

  In the spring, about a year after the ending of the South African War, I was desperate to get out of London, and, after an exceptionally hard winter, found myself longing for warmth and sun. I tried to persuade Henry to come with me to the Mediterranean, but he preferred the gentler unfolding of an English summer, and anyway had never been keen on shipboard life. So this time he encouraged me to holiday alone, and arranged passage for me, with Alice, my maid, aboard a steamship bound for the Far East.

  The steamship, owned by the Addisons, carried a handful of passengers as well as cargo. She would put into Gibraltar for fresh stores and fuel, also into Valletta and Port Said, before proceeding to Bombay. I’d never been to Egypt, and from Henry’s books on travel and exploration, I thought it seemed the most different of Mediterranean countries. At that time of year it promised all the warmth and colour I needed. I instructed Alice to pack the very lightest garments for our stay. We would arrange our return voyage through the Addisons’ agent in Cairo.

  While travelling with me, Alice’s duties were as much those of companion as personal maid, and generally she fulfilled them admirably. We got on well together, but she was not enamoured of long voyages, and often in rough seas would simply take to her cabin. Then I became the maid, making sure she was comfortable while I spent my time on deck, in a strange way enjoying the remnants of my fear, and all the excitement of a battle agains
t the weather.

  Something about the movement of a ship, that rolling, plunging motion, the hiss of the bow-wave and the lonely cry of the seabirds, gave a sense of freedom. I no longer wondered why my forebears had sailed the oceans. And whilst most of our friends preferred to travel in luxury, I found I preferred the working view from cargo ships. The facilities may have been less refined, but everything was quieter, less formal and, to me at least, far more interesting. Also, times had changed, and by and large the food was better.

  The Addisons seemed to be good owners who treated their crews fairly and made a decent allowance for victualling. Even so, when travelling in the past I had sometimes taken it upon myself to comment afterwards, since few other people either could or would. The Addisons were probably used to me after all the journeys I’d made, but I dare say I was something of an irritation to certain shipmasters who disliked having even a handful of passengers aboard. Most especially single women. But I tried not to mind that.

  We were fortunate on the journey out, since there were five others — two Indian Army officers, a middle-aged lady returning from leave with her unmarried daughter, and a single gentleman of indeterminate years and occupation who kept very much to himself. The rest of us were happy to be sociable. The weather was good once we left the Channel behind, and unexpectedly calm for March, even crossing the Bay of Biscay, for which Alice was profoundly thankful. My only complaint, if complaint it could be, was that I found the other passengers distracting. I was so interested in their lives, in their interest in each other – even to the odd gentleman’s unsociability – I barely had time to notice the ship or even her officers and crew. Which probably meant that they were excellent. Anything less and I would have noticed a great deal.

  Of the voyage back, naturally, I remember everything.