‘But then – because of the essential theme, which is, of course, the struggle for power – I began to realise that as a character the Count bore more than a passing resemblance to Irving. And because of the Count’s insatiable thirst for knowledge, his ability to concentrate and absorb – which Irving was incredibly good at – then I did become aware of the similarities between the two.
‘And then I began to think of possibilities for the stage...’ With a shrug he broke off to light a cigar. ‘But Irving never commented, so I imagined he hadn’t read the book. Do you think he might have done, and was offended by it?’
‘Not offended,’ I said. ‘But he might have been disturbed. Didn’t you find it disturbing, when you were writing the book?’
Pondering, smoking his cigar, Bram moved to the window and parted the curtains. As I joined him, he opened the door to the balcony, peering through the fog towards the east cliff.
‘That’s where it began,’ he said quietly, ‘up there at sunset, where I used to wait for you by Lucy’s tomb. You remember the stories we told, the plots we used to weave? It was as though they were setting the scene, providing the framework.
‘I’d had this idea, you see, about a nobleman of ancient lineage, coming to England as a vampire in the present day. I wondered how he would survive in our modern world – against our modern world. But I kept dismissing it, because a story about a vampire didn’t seem so very original – and surely the modern world was too sophisticated for such a creature to survive for long.
‘But then, back in London with the Whitechapel murders, all that changed. Someone – something – committed the worst crimes this country has ever seen – and got away with it. How?
‘Hall Caine and I discussed it endlessly. All kinds of people were questioned – he even knew someone who was briefly arrested – but the police had no evidence to link anyone to the murders. It was more than strange, it was uncanny.
‘All kinds of rumours were circulating in London at the time – including the nonsense that members of the royal household were involved – but in the absence of rhyme or reason it seemed to me that one could weave all kinds of fantastical theories around those gruesome events. And suddenly, my idea of a vampire wreaking havoc in the present day, in the most advanced and populous city in the world, was no longer foolish – it became possible, credible, frightening.
‘From then on, I knew the story had to be written, together with all the Whitby elements. That tremendous storm the day we first met, the wrecks, the Russian ship, the great black hound – and most especially Lucy, and the friends we’d invented for her...’
‘While Count Dracula,’ I murmured, expanding for him, ‘was based on the nobleman you read about in that old book. Whose bloodthirstiness you changed into a literal thirst for blood . . .’
‘Oh, yes,’ he whispered, turning to me, ‘that’s exactly how it was...’
I shivered then and looked out at the fog. Staring blindly, I saw nothing but a dazzling haze of particles, the cold like a tightening physical pressure all around us. I tugged at his arm, urging him inside, but the wraiths came with him, clinging about his shoulders like a cloak. I had an image of the Count entering Lucy’s bedroom to seduce her into the ecstasy of death, and it made me tremble uncontrollably.
Closing the window, dropping the curtains back into place, Bram slipped a cashmere shawl around my shoulders and apologised for his thoughtlessness.
Leading me back to the warmth of the fire, he said, ‘You asked whether I found it disturbing, but it was strange, you know, I nurtured the story for years. While it stayed in my head, life went on as usual. I’d written four books, and had three published, and that achievement alone made a tremendous difference to my life.
‘Writing made everything else bearable – can you understand that? It seemed to bring the separate pieces of my existence together, to resolve the conflicts about who and what I was, and what I was perpetually longing to be. Writing fiction, I discovered, enabled me to be me, without excuse or apology or reference to anyone else. I found I was satisfied and content, probably for the first time in my life.
‘But perhaps more importantly,’ he went on, ‘writing enabled me to deal with Irving and my paying job, which was running the Lyceum. The Lyceum was making money, Irving was enjoying success after success, and then, as a culmination of all he desired, he was awarded his knighthood.
‘In that moment, it was as though the entire profession had been raised overnight from the status of rogues and gypsies to that of the nobility. We were all tremendously proud.
‘It was the strangest week,’ he added. ‘You know my brother Thornley was knighted too? And of course, the entire family felt honoured by that... But, I don’t know, between the excitement of the Palace and the despair of poor Oscar being sentenced, I felt exhausted, glad to get away. Florence felt it too. I wanted to come to Whitby and write, but she wouldn’t hear of it, so we went to Scotland instead, and there I began to put together the notes and ideas I’d been nurturing for almost ten years. That was when I started writing the story.
‘It wasn’t the easiest – it took much longer than the others, and I found it oddly draining. I’d written on holiday before, and always felt invigorated, but for some reason this time I was exhausted by the work, and the book seemed to take forever to complete. In fact it took well over a year, and I was never more relieved to see the end of anything.
‘When Dracula came out I was disappointed. The cover wasn’t what I expected, and the reviews were no more than lukewarm. And then things started to go wrong. Small things throughout the summer, but they rapidly grew worse.
‘Coincidence, perhaps, but when I look back I can’t help but think it was all connected to that damned book. As though somehow, inadvertently, in writing about evil I had given it life. In the end it destroyed virtually everything I cared about... It almost destroyed me too...’
~~~
To anyone else, Bram’s statement might have seemed wild exaggeration. But not to me, not now. I begged him to go on.
‘Until I embarked on that book, Florence and I had been closer than we’d been for years. But this time she hated what I was working on – said it was evil, that it was taking over my soul. But I wouldn’t give up – couldn’t. I had to finish it – finish Count Dracula and get rid of him for good.
‘Once it was published, I heaved a sigh of relief – felt I could relax now, get back to reality, find something lighter to write about. But we were preparing a new production of Richard III – another satanic character – so none of us could relax. Irving was back to his old ways, driving us all mad as he had with Faust.
‘Anyway, come the opening night, nothing went well. He was over-acting like an amateur, and it showed – the critics were muttering before they left the theatre. Furious, he went off to drown his sorrows at the Garrick Club – but then, coming home, he slipped and fell and badly injured his knee. For the first time ever, he was laid up – unable to appear. We were even forced to close the theatre for three weeks at the height of the season.
‘It was disastrous,’ Bram went on, ‘and cost us a fortune. But the damage to his self-esteem was worse – Irving suddenly realised he wasn’t invincible, and it was a shock. Then, not long afterwards, his little dog was killed in a weird accident with the stage-trap. It should never have happened, but somehow it did. He was almost beside himself with grief. Poor little Fussie meant everything to him...
‘But the worst, the very worst thing that happened, was the burning of the Lyceum Storage – you probably heard about that?’
‘Yes – it was in all the papers.’
Bram said tersely, ‘That fire cost us something like £50,000, and we weren’t fully insured. I’d been dicing with fate for years, paying premiums to cover us up to £10,000, simply because Irving wouldn’t hear of any increase. But after the debacle of Richard III he insisted on halving it!’
‘Halving it?’ I found that incredible. ‘Why?’
/> ‘Short of money – for all the aforesaid reasons. And we’d been using the railway arches as storage for years, so he thought nothing could go wrong. And in theory it shouldn’t have – except it did, God knows why. Do you know, Damaris, the heat was so ferocious, it burned the arches three bricks deep, and turned the coping stones to powder...’
Horrified, I was shamed, suddenly, by a recollection of old suspicions. Mysterious fires and large insurance claims were all too common. But now, hearing the appalling truth behind it, I was shocked.
‘It was terrifying, Damaris. I can see it still,’ he said, eyes tight shut against the image. ‘Ever since, I’ve wondered at the cause...’ With a despairing shake of the head, he roused himself. ‘Irving... well, the shock nearly killed him. He was like a man who’s had his entire family wiped out before his eyes.’
‘But you were there – the eyes were yours,’ I said softly, understanding how deeply he’d been affected. ‘The Lyceum was your life too.’
‘All those magnificent sets’ he murmured sadly, ‘Forty-four plays – half of which had been great productions... Irreplaceable.’
Taking my hand, almost crushing it, he said: ‘I’d decided to retire – can you believe that? I was so frustrated by the extravagance and endless entertaining, by the sheer impossibility of controlling it. Years of trying to curb Irving’s wild ideas, save money, balance the books – it was impossible.
He sat back, shook his head. ‘I was exhausted. And that week of the fire, I had another novel coming out – an old one and not one of my best efforts, to be sure – but suddenly I was trying to fend off a court case. The railway company was suing us for damage to the line and we weren’t insured, for God’s sake!’
Appalled, on the edge of my seat, I said, ‘So what happened?
‘Irving collapsed. Pleurisy and pneumonia – he was bedridden for weeks. And meanwhile, the court case dragged on... All that in a year,’ he added on a long release of breath.
‘So you had to stay,’ I murmured. ‘How on earth did you manage?’
He raised his eyes to mine. ‘Didn’t you know? Irving sold the Lyceum – sold it without even telling me.’
Aghast at such a betrayal, I simply stared – and then wondered why I was so surprised. ‘But why?’ I demanded. ‘Didn’t he discuss it with you?’
Bram shrugged, reached for his glass, said the matter had become a forbidden topic. ‘No. And it was never explained – at least not in any way that made sense. The deal was done while he was ill – obviously he was worried about finance – but it was the haste with which he did it...
‘I still think it was deliberate,’ he added, explaining that Irving didn’t want anyone to know that he’d sold out to a syndicate, not until the deal was complete. ‘It was madness – despite the fire, the Lyceum itself was still a going concern. I could have secured far better terms – if only he’d trusted me, given me an inkling of what was going on. But it was all done just as I was leaving for New York...’
Biting my tongue on something worse, I said it was a pity he and Ellen and the rest hadn’t bailed out and left him to it; but Bram shook his head.
‘It was only a matter of time, Damaris – we all knew he was a sick man.’
‘He betrayed you,’ I reminded him.
Quiet for a while, seeming to ponder the truth of that, he said with difficulty: ‘In a sense, yes, he did. But I couldn’t abandon him at his lowest ebb – I had to stay and see him through. I owed him that.’
‘Bram, for heaven’s sake – after all you’d given, you owed him nothing!’
‘You say that, Damaris, but he and the Lyceum had been my life. Not easy, I’ll grant you that, but then whose life is? We were managing perfectly well until...’ He rubbed his eyes, and for a moment seemed so despairing I could have wept for him.
‘It was the book, you see – somehow, with Dracula, I knew I’d had a hand in his fall.’
I made a vague protest; but at heart I understood. At the time of the fire, I’d felt it too, that connection between Irving and the destruction of the Count.
‘Disaster following disaster,’ he said slowly, ‘until it began to seem rather more than just a series of unfortunate coincidences. It was all so unnerving, I began to look over my shoulder while walking home at night. I felt my heart pounding at every potential threat. It was as though we’d been granted our successes, and now we were paying the price.’
‘As though unseen moneylenders were calling in the chips,’ I concluded.
‘Like Faust’s contract with Mephistopheles...’
He went on to say, with evident discomfort, that he felt haunted by those events, and guilty too, because he’d resented the way success had turned Irving from friend into despot; he’d even wished him ill at times, if only that he might be taught a much-needed lesson. He’d wanted things to go wrong, just so that Irving could see who his real friends were; to prove that he, Bram, would still be by his side, even in adversity.
‘But it doesn’t work like that, does it?’ he commented quietly.
I watched his face, his eyes, the sadness of his mouth, and knew his pain, his sense of guilt. ‘No,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t. We have to be careful what we wish for.’
‘When everything fell down, I was crushed too. And I couldn’t get over the feeling that I was the one who’d brought it about.
‘It was the book,’ he said again, taking a deep breath. ‘Somehow, evil was written into it – inadvertently, perhaps, but it rebounded on all of us. I don’t know why, but what was intended to be a simple vampire tale turned into something else along the way, and, once it was complete, it seemed to take on a life of its own – as though I was merely a vehicle, a medium through which it could be told.
‘I don’t think it matters that good won out in the end,’ he added. ‘Well, yes, it does matter, because good has to keep evil in check – and has to be seen to do so. But it seems my writing gave it life, allowed it to flex its muscles – gave it a chance to work its mischief. Nothing too dramatic, of course – an accident here, a fire there, deaths, doubts, arguments, betrayals...’
I shivered, but not just with fear. Something primitive inside me was unpleasantly satisfied to know that Irving got his comeuppance in the end, that he was paid back for all the pain he’d cost me. And Bram. And Florence. And the boy, Noel. I didn’t much care who caused it or what the vehicle was. I understood instinctively what Bram meant about evil rebounding. I thought of Irving’s powerful personality, and that mesmeric quality he had, which I’d experienced that day at the cottage. The elements of attraction and repulsion were part of him, as direct and disturbing as the presence of the Count in Bram’s novel.
‘Whatever caused his luck to turn,’ I said brusquely, ‘Irving had talent as well as power – and as you say, he abused both, in a direct and very personal way. He used people and cast them aside. He betrayed your friendship, your loyalty, your talent...And as a matter of foolish pride,’ I added with forced laughter, ‘he even turned down an absolute gift of a part...’
Resisting the urge to heap further coals upon the man, I said, ‘Who knows? Maybe the old Count couldn’t bear the insult – maybe he did wreak his revenge, after all...’
Fifty-one
We parted a little after midnight, to go to our respective beds. Bram assured me that he felt better than for many a month, and was sure to sleep, but I was not so confident. I found myself tossing and turning, thinking of the past. In that embrace before we parted, I’d been very much aware of wanting him to stay. Not to indulge in the antics of twenty years ago, not even because I was lonely – which I was – but to be assured of his warmth, his lasting affection, and even to offer him something of myself in return.
Looking back on that summer I could see how in the passion of youth I’d rejected good sense and good upbringing, everything, in fact, that I knew to be straight and sensible and the accepted way. The accepted way was not for me, and was probably never intended to be, but in the cour
se of finding a more amenable path I’d taken a detour that might easily have proved fatal.
When it came to Bram, I couldn’t blame fate or even ignorance entirely. I’d embraced that liaison with my eyes open, unblinkered by anything beyond the desire to be admired and indulged, to break the rules and find my own level, and in the process to cock a snook at the staid moral values my background represented. Ultimately, life, fate, doom or whatever, had decreed the price I was to pay in return. It might have seemed severe but, to counter that, Bram’s generosity had provided my passport to another world. Whether the money was directly his or lent by Irving, no longer mattered. The point was, Bram hadn’t abandoned me entirely, but taken care of me in the only way that was open to him at the time. He hadn’t seduced me, either. Initially I’d made love to him, and the decision to seek out Nan Mills had been mine, not his. Irving had altered the balance, but there had been compensations, even for being childless. I had no right to complain that life had been unfair.
All in all, I was immensely glad that Bram and I had met again. Our conversations had balanced the scales. Especially when it came to Irving.
And I kept coming back to Irving, that shadowy figure in the wings of my life. I couldn’t help going over those last years when he was so beset by illness, yet still working, still touring, eventually making a very professional exit during his farewell tour of the country. After playing Becket at the Theatre Royal, Bradford, the great actor had collapsed, dying shortly afterwards in the foyer of his hotel.
It was the 13th of October, and a Friday.
So elegantly stage-managed, I remember thinking at the time, just like his funeral service, held in Westminster Abbey with representatives of the royal family in attendance. But although his friends could be proud of that honour, for Bram, Irving’s death had been like losing a brother. After all those years, the sudden emptiness had been filled with unexpected grief for other losses. Bereaved and despairing, finding it difficult to work, Bram had barely noticed that he was physically ill.
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