A Christmas Homecoming: A Novel

allin attended the morning rehearsal the following day. Now he was quite open about his suggestions, and Alice was eager to adapt them. Douglas seemed less displeased, and Caroline noticed that when Lydia was not onstage playing the character of Lucy, they quite often stood together. They did so awkwardly at first, but then with increasing ease. They might have simply been commenting on the play and its progress—Caroline was not close enough to hear—but the unspoken communication between them told quite a different story. She had learned from Joshua the difference between text—the words on the page that actors spoke—and subtext—the emotional meaning that they conveyed and (if the acting was any good) that the audience understood. For Douglas and Lydia, the subtext was that they were increasingly drawn to each other. Alice either had not noticed, or else she had, and was not as disturbed by it.

Did Alice believe she could undo any damage as soon as Lydia left? Was she so confident of herself, or of Douglas’s love for her? Or had it perhaps to do with her father’s wealth and the opportunities that it would offer Douglas in the future? Was she really so shallow? So vain?

Caroline found herself hoping very much that the latter was not so. She liked Alice. She was highly individual, and perhaps she reminded Caroline rather a lot of her own daughter Charlotte, another young woman full of impractical dreams.

Or was it really that Alice reminded her of herself? After all, what kind of a woman with any sense would abandon a respectable and financially safe widowhood in order to marry a Jewish actor seventeen years her junior? Caroline shook her head and turned her attention back to the stage, where the drama was beginning to form a coherent whole. At last Joshua himself was acting, not merely reading his part and watching the situation and the details of others. The entry of Dracula made a world of difference.

Very carefully Caroline dimmed the lights, then brightened them slowly as the coffin lid opened, the creak of the wood pausing for just a moment before Joshua emerged.

She almost stopped breathing as he uncurled his body and stood up, his face wreathed in a terrible smile.

There was a gasp from Alice, sitting close in the front row, and Mercy gave a little shriek.

“Ah!” Ballin said with satisfaction. “But one small suggestion. May I show you? It might be simpler than trying to explain.”

Joshua’s jaw tightened, but he stepped aside. “Of course.”

Caroline dimmed the lights and began again.

Ballin climbed into the coffin and lowered the lid. There was a moment’s silence. Everyone was watching. Very slowly the lid rose again, perhaps two or three inches, then long, white fingers emerged, curling like talons, feeling around as if in search of something.

“Oh, God!” Mercy breathed, her own hands flying to her face.

The coffin lid continued to open very slowly. A full arm was visible. Then, still carefully, noiselessly, Ballin climbed out and stood up, his head peering from side to side.

There was no need for anyone to comment; the difference was too clear to require it.

Caroline found herself tense when they resumed, picking up as Dracula crept up on Lucy, sitting on a bench overlooking the sea. They went through the attack, but it lacked that vital knife edge of terror. After the power of Dracula’s emergence, it was anticlimactic.

“The book says a bench, a ‘park seat,’ ” Joshua said unhappily. “But it’s awkward. It’s just physically clumsy.”

“You are right,” Ballin agreed. He turned to Alice. “Have you any better ideas, Miss Netheridge? Something less … pedestrian? Certainly something less impossible to relax back against.”

“Relax?” she said in astonishment. “She is attacked by a vampire just risen from the grave!”

“No, no, no!” Ballin shook his head. “She is seduced, Miss Netheridge. We have seen him walk from his coffin but she has not. We watch the horror, helpless to prevent it. That is your tension. Never forget it. We know he is something hideous, risen from the dead, but to her he is a lover, bewitching her, filling her dreams.”

“Ugh!” Alice shuddered, but there was no denial in her face. On the contrary, her eyes were bright with a kind of luminous excitement.

From the back of the room, Douglas looked at her with a distress quickly mounting into anger.

“Perhaps it isn’t the path above the cliff at all,” she suggested, watching Ballin. “What if she has gone to the graveyard to pay her respects to her dead father, or mother?”

“A gravestone?” James said in disbelief. “You want her seduced on a gravestone? Miss Netheridge, that is … vulgar, even blasphemous.” His face showed his distaste very plainly.

Alice blushed, but she did not retreat. “It is her neck he bites, Mr. Hobbs. I was not imagining an overtly”—she swallowed—“sexual scene. I am surprised you were.”

Now James blushed scarlet.

Ballin smiled. “An excellent idea, Miss Netheridge. I assume you had in mind one of the taller stones. If she were to lean back against it, all the symbolism would be perfect, the suggestion without the gross detail.” He swung around to Joshua. “Do you not think so, too, Mr. Fielding?”

There was only an instant’s conflict in Joshua’s face, then the resolution. “Of course,” he agreed. “It might be difficult to make something suitable. For now we can use one of the upended trunks.”

It took ten minutes to find such a thing and prop it up, with weights at the bottom so it would stand. They replayed the scene, and suddenly it was transformed. The gravestone worked perfectly, allowing Joshua to raise his arms and spread his shielding black cloak. The audience could imagine anything they wished. When he moved back, slowly, as if sated, Lydia leaned half-collapsed against its support.

From the audience Mercy gave almost involuntary applause. It was as if she was so wrapped up in their performance that, for a moment, her professional enthusiasm overrode her personal need to be in the limelight.

Dracula’s first entry to the house, with Mina’s invitation to him to come in, had to be done several times. It was mostly in order to place the lighting in exactly the right position so he stood first in dramatic shadow, and then emerged out of it, transforming from a figure of menace to one of increasing charm, even grace. The final time they ran the scene, even Mr. Netheridge could not help but be fascinated. He had come in quietly and was watching from the back.

“Aye,” he said grudgingly. “It’s gripping, I’ll grant you that.” He turned to Alice. “You’ve done well, girl. I begin to see what you’re on about.”

She smiled and said nothing, but the pleasure was bright in her face. She looked across at Ballin, and he gave a tiny nod of acknowledgment. It was so small that had she not been looking at him directly, Caroline would barely have seen it.

The scene with Van Helsing acting as Renfield worked superbly. Vincent was excellent. He would not have admitted it, but he copied almost exactly what Ballin had done, although his own sense of timing also asserted itself. The result was both chilling and pathetic, and very real.

By the time they came to Lucy’s death scene, they were all caught up in the story. Even James, as Jonathan Harker, displayed a sensitivity Caroline had never seen in him before. Mercy’s grief as Mina reduced the audience to a throat-aching silence, and Eliza, who had also returned to watch, quickly dabbed at her eyes to hide her tears.

They took a break only for luncheon: cold meat sandwiches, pickles, and hot apple pie with cream, all served in the theater.

“I think we should see more of Harker and less of Van Helsing in the tomb scene,” Mercy said suddenly. She had just finished the last of her pie and was reaching for the excellent white wine that had been served with it. “It would improve the pace. Van Helsing is the intellect; Harker is the heart and the courage of the pursuit. Apart from Mina, of course.”

“Of course,” Lydia answered. “But actually the core of the scene is Lucy. She is the one who has become a vampire. And we still don’t know what we are going to do about the children.” She looked at Joshua, then turned to Ballin. “Perhaps Mr. Ballin, who seems to have been sent here by the storm to solve all our problems, will be able to answer that for us?”

“We are reduced to illusion,” he said thoughtfully. “We have no way of physically representing a child. Alice could—” It was the first time he had used her given name.

“That’s stupid!” Douglas cut across him at once. “She is nothing like a child; she couldn’t play one. She’s a full-grown woman, at least in appearance.”

Ballin’s face tightened with anger, whether for himself or for Alice it was impossible to tell. “She is also quite a passable actress, Mr. Paterson,” he said very softly, very precisely. His voice was oddly cold, as if there was some threat in it. “We can make a dummy, something of pillows, with the appearance of arms and a head. I’m sure Mrs. Netheridge’s maid can give us a dress that will do. The minds of the audience will create for them what they expect to see.”

Joshua gave a sigh of relief.

Douglas snorted with what seemed to be contempt, although Caroline was certain that it was actually frustration.

“The master of delusion and deceit, aren’t you!” Douglas spat the words.

It was Alice who sprang to Ballin’s defense. “Stagecraft, Douglas. I’m sorry you don’t know the difference. It is causing you to be unnecessarily rude to our guest.”

“He is not our guest,” Douglas insisted. “He is a stranger who landed on the doorstep out of the storm, melodramatically, asking for help, and he has been aping Dracula ever since.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Alice said angrily. “He told us what happened. His carriage overturned and broke a wheel in the snow. He won’t be the only person stranded in this weather. What on earth would anyone do except invite him in, especially at Christmas? What would you have done? Tell him there is no room?”

“Invite the vampire into your house,” Douglas answered, his own voice louder and more strident. “He told you himself: Evil can come in only if you invite it.”

Alice paled a little. “No one can come in unless they are invited,” she said, glaring at him. “Don’t tell me we’ve done this so well you actually believe in this vampire stuff?” She tried to laugh, and failed. It came out as a gasp of breath, with no humor and no conviction.

“I believe in evil. And in stupidity,” he said bitterly.

Her eyes raked him up and down. Her lip curled a little. “Don’t we all?”

“Of course we do.” Lydia moved closer to Douglas’s side. “If we didn’t before, we should now.” She faced Alice. “You are fortunate to have the love of so fine a man, Miss Netheridge. I think he is something like Jonathan Harker, brave and modest, not knowing how to fight evil because he has none within himself, to be able to understand it.”

Alice went even paler. She started to say something, then changed her mind and walked away.

“Perhaps you’d like to attack the children again after we’ve finished lunch?” Joshua suggested to Lydia with an edge of sarcasm that was breathtaking. “Just pretend you have the dummy in your arms. Leave it in the shadows. Drop it, if it seems right to you, and then come forward to Harker and Van Helsing.”

Caroline put her hands over her face and pretended she was somewhere else, just to give herself time to re-gather her strength.