A Christmas Homecoming: A Novel

or a time as they worked, the challenge of creating a story in which they could all believe overtook their personal differences. There was a spark of excitement in the air.

Caroline leaned forward in her seat as they put more energy and movement into their positions on the stage. It was beginning to come alive. She forgot she was sitting on a chair in a stranger’s house in Whitby, working to make something good out of something poor. Bram Stoker’s characters became people; the dark shadow of the vampire reached out and chilled them all.

Vincent was enthusiastic about Van Helsing’s new and larger role. As Joshua had predicted to Caroline, he grasped at the chance to play Renfield as well. He did not do it exactly as Ballin had, but he did it slyly, at moments pathetically. In spite of her dislike of Vincent, Caroline was forced to be both fascinated and moved by his performance. Renfield became not a device to further the plot but a real person, revolting and pitiful. Vincent Singer was Van Helsing, and Van Helsing, in his portrayal, was Renfield. The magic was complete.

When they changed the scene, stopping for a few minutes to talk about movements, Caroline turned to Eliza sitting beside her. She saw the awe in Eliza’s face, the naked emotion.

Aware of being looked at, Eliza colored a little and smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”

“No. And please don’t be sorry. You were caught up in it. So was I. It is the greatest compliment you can pay an actor,” Caroline replied.

Eliza looked startled. “I suppose it is. You know, for a moment I believed it as if I were there. Do you suppose there really are people like poor Renfield?”

“I fear there are.” Caroline shivered. “But I am quite sure that there are no actual vampires.”

“Actual?” Eliza stared at her. “But such seductive art is real, isn’t it! People who prey on one another, even who live by feeding on each other in some emotional way.”

“I think that is the whole point,” Caroline agreed. “It would hardly frighten us if the danger were only imaginary. We jump at shadows the first time, and then we laugh at our own foolishness and feel silly, but happy that there was no substance to it. If at heart we know the evil is real, then the feeling is completely different.”

Eliza looked at her with anxiety. “Should we be dealing with such ideas about real evil at Christmas? Isn’t it … inappropriate?”

“But isn’t the good real as well?” Caroline countered simply.

Eliza swallowed hard, her throat tightening.

“I used to believe the battle between good and evil was something of a fairy story,” Caroline went on seriously. She remembered Sarah’s death. She felt the horror again, as sharp as if it had been yesterday.

“Now as I get older and have seen more, I believe it is real. We need redeeming so desperately. We need hope because without it we have nothing. If there is a God, then mercy and renewal must be possible, even if we understand only a little of them, and nothing at all of how such redemption works. We get so much wrong, make so many rules, because it deludes us into thinking we have control of what goes on around us. We don’t, and we shouldn’t want to.

“For heaven’s sake, we are so limited!” she added with sudden ferocity. “We need a force infinitely bigger and wiser than we are in our lives. But we cannot have good without also the possibility of evil, so if there are angels, then there must be devils as well. If we are even remotely honest with ourselves, we know that. So …” She looked at Eliza’s face and wondered if she had already said too much. “So in a way devils and demons are good,” she finished. “Because if we are reminded that there is evil, even supernatural manifestations of it, then we will believe in and love the good even more.”

Eliza was smiling. She put out a hand very tentatively, resting it on Caroline’s arm. “My dear, you are a remarkable woman. I could never have imagined that watching a group of actors working would have taught me something I so badly needed to know. Thank you so much.” Then, as if embarrassed by her frankness, she stood up and excused herself to go and speak to the cook about dinner. “I fear we shall have to be a little more sparing with our rations than usual,” she added, by way of explanation.

Caroline thought that the cook would have noticed for herself that the snow was impassable, but she only nodded agreement.

On the stage they were proceeding with some of the later scenes; Vincent Singer was elaborating on Van Helsing’s intellectual brilliance.

Caroline watched Joshua, and knew he did not like it. She agreed with him. Glancing at the faces of those who were watching, she could see that they were bored as well.

Mr. Ballin came in silently, bowing briefly to Caroline, and to Alice and Lydia, who were both sitting in the audience. Douglas ignored him, but Ballin did not seem to see anything untoward about Douglas’s manner.

Caroline watched Joshua standing on the stage holding the script in his hand. He had asked Vincent to make more of Van Helsing’s character, his humanity. But now that Vincent was trying to add depth, the character was not coming alive. But Joshua needed a solution before he risked interrupting Vincent’s monologue. They could not afford the time or the emotional energy for tantrums, and Singer was crucial to the drama.

Vincent continued on, making Van Helsing seem a smug genius, and Alice sat wincing, looking more and more perplexed.

Finally Joshua interrupted. “Vincent, this doesn’t work. It’s taking up too much time, and half of it is irrelevant.”

Vincent stared at him. “I thought you wanted Van Helsing to be more of a character? As Miss Netheridge has written him, he’s flat, and even tedious. And more important, he’s no match for Dracula. How many times have you told us that a hero has no validity if the villain has no menace and no power? Surely the reverse must also be true?”

“Yes, it is,” Joshua conceded. “But telling us he is clever doesn’t convince—”

“What do you want?” Vincent demanded. “I’m an actor, not a conjurer or a contortionist. You want the music halls for tricksters!”

“It’s too many words,” Joshua said flatly. “We stop listening.”

Ballin walked over toward the stage. “No one cares for a man who boasts of his achievements,” he said quietly but very clearly. “And we have to like Van Helsing, even if we do not always understand or approve of what he does until after he has done it. Then we see the necessity.”

Vincent started to speak, and Joshua held up a hand to silence him.

“What do you suggest?” he asked Ballin.

“Let him solve a problem, a difficulty of some sort,” Ballin replied. “Then his quick thinking, his knowledge and improvisation will be evident, and useful. He will not need to boast; in fact, he will not need to speak at all.”

“Oh, bravo!” Vincent applauded. “Such as what? I’m sure you must be overburdened with examples.”

Ballin thought for a moment. “Well, the use of light and mirrors is always interesting,” he replied. “Especially with vampires, who traditionally have no reflection.”

“We already know who the vampire is.” Vincent dismissed the suggestion with a degree of contempt.

Ballin ignored him. “Van Helsing could arrange mirrors that reflect from each other, magnifying light and sending it around corners. Vampires are creatures of the shadows. At least to begin with, Dracula does not wish to be exposed.”

“Brilliant,” Vincent said sarcastically. “Then we lose all the tension because we defeat the poor devil right at the beginning. So how is it then that we let anyone fall victim to him? Are we all just blazingly incompetent?”

Ballin was unperturbed. “We do not succeed because Lucy is bitten outside, in the night, before Dracula ever enters the house. Van Helsing doesn’t know that. Nor, at the beginning, does he know the depth of the vampire’s seduction. Lucy moves the mirrors, just as later Mina will lie, and even become violent, when Dracula calls her.”

Joshua was smiling slowly.

Ballin continued. “Later Van Helsing could suggest an alarm to warn them all if anyone enters Mina’s room through the window. A chemical device, of magnesium dislodged by the movement of the window so that it lands in water. It would give off a brilliant white light, which could be seen by anyone watching the window from another part of the house.”

“And they don’t come running to the rescue because …?” Vincent asked, but his voice was now interested rather than dismissive.

Ballin smiled very slightly. “Because Mina has drugged their wine. That is already in the story. Again, clever as we are, we have underestimated the strength of the vampire’s hold over our minds.”

This time, Vincent agreed, but reluctantly.

“Good,” Joshua said firmly. “Now there is the problem of lighting the scene where we peer into Lucy’s tomb in the crypt. I haven’t worked out yet how we can do that so the audience can see. The sense of shock and dawning horror is crucial there.”

“Any ideas for that?” Vincent asked Ballin.

“Do not show the audience,” Ballin answered.

“Oh, superb!” Vincent jeered again. “What shall we do? Recite it to them in the rash of words you are so much against? I’m sure that will frighten them out of their wits! Very dramatic.”

Ballin kept his patience. He smiled, as if amused at Vincent’s contempt. “Most emotions are the more powerful for being shown through the characters we identify with,” he said calmly. “Open the tomb with a creak, a sigh of hinges, and let us see the horror dawn on the faces of Van Helsing and Mr. Harker, even Mina, whom we admire so much. Let us see her grief for her friend Lucy. Perhaps you need an additional scene earlier on so we may observe how fond they are of each other? We will know that something is terribly, hideously wrong, but for a space of seconds time will stand still and we will not know what it is. Our imaginations will fill it in with a score of different abominations. Then one of you may say that the tomb is empty.” Ballin spread his hands in an elegant gesture, his pale fingers catching the light.

They went on discussing, adding to and taking out, and by the end of the afternoon they were exhausted. Caroline and Joshua went up to their room, Caroline grateful for an hour’s respite from the subject before they all met again for dinner.

But when they were in the bedroom and the door closed, she could see that Joshua was still worried. He certainly would not rest as she had hoped.

“It’s not working,” he said bleakly, standing at the window and staring out at the light catching on the pale blur of snowflakes in the darkness beyond. “Not yet.”

She bit back her impatience. The disappointment in his voice was enough to pull at her emotions, crushing the irritation she had felt mounting inside her.

“I thought Mr. Ballin’s suggestions were very good,” she said, knowing she risked making him feel as if he should have thought of them himself. Just now she believed the rescue was more important than its source.

He turned to face the room, the lines around his mouth deeply etched, his eyes pink-rimmed. “They are,” he agreed. “But they are only cosmetic. There is still a lack of cutting edge to it. Dracula isn’t … isn’t terrifying. We can feel the horror, but not the evil.”

She wanted to be helpful but nothing came to her mind that was honest, and he did not deserve to be patronized with false comfort. “I’m not certain if I know what evil is, onstage,” she said unhappily.

He pushed his hands into his pockets. “Ballin is right: It will only become real to us, and to the audience, when we see the effects of such evil in others. I wish I could think how to show that.”

“Who is Mr. Ballin, I wonder?” she asked curiously. “He seems to know a lot about vampires, and about acting. How can he? Dracula was only published this year.”

“I’ve no idea who he is,” he replied, walking toward the bed and lying down, hands behind his head. “I could sleep until tomorrow,” he said. “Except that I can’t afford to.”

“Mina,” Caroline said suddenly, with certainty.

“What about her?” Joshua was confused.

She turned toward him. “Jonathan Harker is a usual sort of hero, but he’s … I don’t know … a bit cardboard, terribly predictable. He isn’t like any real person I know, because he has no faults, no vulnerabilities—unless being a crashing bore is a vulnerability? It isn’t, is it?”

He smiled. “Not onstage. Bores don’t feel hurt, they just drive everyone else to drink. What are you getting at?”

“We don’t really care about Harker,” she explained. “We know he’s good, but we don’t care. And Van Helsing is a ‘know-it-all.’ We need him to defeat Dracula, and we believe he’s going to. In fact, I suppose we take it for granted. But Mina is good, really good—but vulnerable, too. She cares about other people. She’s brave but she has enough sense to be frightened as well, and later on when the holy wafer burns her, we know that Dracula has finally gotten to her. She is the one we need to care about, to see slowly pulled further and further down into the darkness, despite everything. I would mind terribly if anything happened to her, anything that Van Helsing couldn’t save her from.”

He sat up. “Would you?”

“Yes. Yes I would.”

He leaned forward and kissed her, gently and for a long time.

“Then we shall let them think Mina will not survive,” he said at last. “Thank you!”