A Christmas Homecoming: A Novel

alf an hour later they were back rehearsing again. This time Caroline was taking notes for the lighting that would be required, as well as any further props that could be used to suggest a scene. They had bright limelights with them, and Joshua had shown her the equipment, and how to use it. It was a strange contraption with little taps to turn on the hydrogen and oxygen, and a screw for rotating and raising the calcium oxide. Just at the moment, all she wanted to do was make decisions about where in the script the lights needed to be focused, or changed.

Joshua and Alice had done some further rewriting, and they began with a scene from earlier in the play. They had cut out Jonathan Harker’s account of Renfield’s travels in Transylvania, and given the speech referring to Renfield’s circumstances to Van Helsing instead. With the other character cuts, the changes worked far more smoothly than the earlier version had.

Vincent was reading from the new script. Even though he described the reduction to insanity of a previously decent man, it seemed to Caroline to be without either honor or pity. She found her attention wandering, and was very much afraid that the audience’s would also. Was Alice’s writing really so poor?

She looked at Joshua’s face and saw his frustration. Alice was standing just below the stage; her pale face and tight jaw betrayed that she also knew it was not working.

Ballin stood up.

Vincent stopped reading at once and glared at him. “Does your superior knowledge of vampires, or of good and evil, suggest how this could be better written?” he asked sarcastically.

“Not at all. But I have a suggestion about how it could be differently played,” Ballin replied mildly. “Though it would alter the character of Van Helsing somewhat.”

Vincent spread his arms wide. “By all means. After all, what does Bram Stoker know about it? Or about anything?”

“We can’t avail ourselves of his knowledge,” Ballin replied. “At least not before Christmas, and we need a remedy rather sooner than that.”

“In what way would it alter Van Helsing, Mr. Ballin?” Alice asked, cutting across Vincent.

Ballin moved toward the steps up to the stage. The lights shone on his coal-black hair and his unnaturally pale face with its powerful features.

“By giving him a little lightness,” he replied, glancing at her, then at Joshua. “It is possible to be very serious about fighting evil without taking yourself so … pompously. Allow him a sense of humor, some eccentricity or talent other than his obsession with vampires.”

“That’s the whole point of him.” Vincent was really angry now. “If you can’t see that, then you have missed the essence of the character.”

“That he has but one dimension?” Ballin concluded. “Do you you truly believe so?” Again he looked at Alice. “I do not.”

Vincent opened his mouth to retaliate, then decided against it. He abruptly threw the script down on the floor, leaving its pages scattered.

Joshua was pale, the lines around his mouth deep-etched. He looked so weary that Caroline longed to help him, but could think of no way at all to do so.

Ballin climbed up the steps onto the stage, picked up the fallen script, and found the place where Van Helsing described Renfield.

“May I?” he asked.

Alice nodded.

“If you wish,” Joshua conceded.

Ballin began, using exactly the same words as Vincent had, but in a totally different voice. He was not Van Helsing using language to tell the audience how Renfield had caught flies and eaten them, or pulled the heads off rats to drink their blood: He was Renfield doing it in front of them. He buzzed, mimicking the flies. His hand moved so fast it was barely visible, as if he had caught the insect on the wing. The buzzing ceased. He put it to his mouth and crunched his teeth.

In the audience Lydia gasped and stifled a cry. Eliza Netheridge groaned. Mercy put her hand over her own mouth as if to prevent anything from entering it.

Ballin went on. He described a rat, clicking his fingernails on one another like rat feet on the floor. He wrinkled his nose, sniffing. He pounced on an imaginary rat, squeaking as the creature might, and made a movement as if tearing off its head.

Caroline felt her stomach clench and was glad she had not just eaten her luncheon. In her mind’s eye she could clearly see the miserable Renfield, reduced to an insane caricature of the man he had been, so in thrall to the vampire that he imagined he could survive only by such means.

Ballin handed the script back to Joshua and straightened his back. The obscene pleasure left his face.

“There is nothing wrong with Miss Netheridge’s words,” he said quietly. “Although perhaps fewer of them are needed, if the actor portrays Renfield himself rather than Van Helsing telling us about him. Why should Van Helsing not be a man of imagination and empathy, even if it is for such a poor wretch as Renfield? That would enable the audience to see for themselves the man’s decline as Dracula’s ascendancy over him strengthens. It must be emotionally more powerful. And perhaps it also explains Van Helsing’s greater ability to understand the vampire itself: an empathetic imagination, no?” He made it half a question, but the answer was obvious.

Joshua was smiling. He took the script back and made a brief note in the margin. “You’re quite right, Mr. Ballin,” he said graciously. “We can create a far more powerful image with imitation rather than mere description, and in doing so, cut out a page or so of words. And we can use the same device later on, to show the cause of his decline. Thank you.”

Ballin bowed. “It is my privilege to take part in your work, even if by so small a contribution.”

“It’s not small,” Joshua replied. “It is always difficult to reduce a cast drastically, and this helps us to conjure for the audience the characters we can’t afford to play, but also cannot cut entirely.”

They read on through Lucy’s death scene. The man she loved was one of the many characters who had been cut out, and without him the scene lacked emotion, witnessed and felt only by Harker and Van Helsing. It appeared as if a stranger had died rather than somebody loved and cherished; there was nothing moving about it.

“We can dim most of the stage here?” Joshua said, frowning. “Perhaps create more deliberate shadows?”

Alice was not happy with the idea. “But at this point, it seems Lucy has gone peacefully, to escape the pain she had,” she said. “We don’t know yet what has really happened to her. Wouldn’t dimming the stage to darkness be too much of a hint at what’s to come?” Then she blushed at her boldness in challenging him.

“For heaven’s sake,” Douglas said irritably. “Nobody’s going to be so involved that it’ll matter! It’s a story, a piece of make-believe to entertain. I’m sorry, Alice, but it just doesn’t matter.”

She ignored him entirely, as if he had not spoken at all. But the pallor of her face and the muscles of her neck, which showed rigid above her lace collar, gave away the fact that she had heard him.

“I don’t think we should create more shadows,” Alice said to Joshua, as if they were the only two present. “I think we should keep Mina here. After all, she is one of the strongest and most sympathetic characters, and she and Lucy were friends all their lives. Mina’s grief can be ours. It wouldn’t be difficult to write her in. I can do it this evening.”

Joshua hesitated only a moment. “Good. We don’t need much in the way of words, just the sight of her face. Give it to Mercy when you’ve finished.” He turned to Vincent, who was standing at the back of the stage looking elaborately bored.

“Let’s run the bit where Lucy attacks the children. That needs more work. It’s still awkward. We’ll go through the scene in the script, and also the part where the stake is put through Lucy’s body in the coffin. James, we’ll have to see most of the horror of that moment in your face.”

They obeyed. Caroline watched and took notes until a late luncheon was served, then again all afternoon. They could not resolve all the slow patches, or the technical difficulties, but they continued into the search for Dracula after the destruction of Lucy’s vampire form in the coffin. As Joshua had suggested, they put another excellent piece of mimicry into Van Helsing’s speech recounting Renfield’s death and final release from his terrible state; even in his very last moments, as his body contorted, Renfield could not completely forget his lust for the life force in the flies and rats, so tight was the vampire’s control over him.

They began to work on the first part of the play, where Dracula attacks Mina, establishing the bond with her that would ultimately bring about his own destruction.

“It’s coming,” Joshua said wearily, his voice cracking a little. It was nearly six o’clock in the evening and they were all exhausted. The snow was still streaming past the windows in the darkness, glistening briefly in the reflected light before the curtains were pulled closed.

He repeated the same belief again to Caroline when they were at last alone in their bedroom. The fire burned hot in the hearth, the guard set in front of it so no coals could fall out and set light to the carpet. It was warm, silent but for the rushing of the wind outside, and filled with a rare kind of comfort, as if they were uniquely safe.

“Is it truly?” she asked him. She sat on the bed brushing her hair, finding the rhythm of the movement soothing.

He smiled. “Yes. Alice is really quite good, you know. She’s perceptive and she learns quickly.”

“Mr. Ballin was brilliant.” She watched his face to read whether he minded or not. She saw only admiration.

“It makes me wonder if he is an actor himself,” he agreed. “Or even a playwright. I didn’t think of having Van Helsing virtually play Renfield, but as soon as he showed us, it seemed so obvious.”

“Will Vincent do it?” she asked with sudden anxiety. “What if his vanity prevents him from taking the advice?”

Joshua smiled widely, almost a grin. “You don’t understand him yet, do you? He’ll do it, believe me, and take credit for the idea. It’s far too clever, too good a showcase for his talents for him to turn it aside. I won’t have to persuade him, which is what you are afraid of.”

“Am I so easy to read?” she demanded, putting the brush down on the bed and letting her hair fall loose around her.

He looked at it with obvious pleasure. “Yes, a lot of the time,” he answered. “But only because I care enough to watch you.”

She smiled back at him, feeling more than the warmth of the room inside her, a safety deeper than the stone walls of this huge house on its hilltop defying the storm.