Читать книгу The Monster Trilogy - Brian Aldiss - Страница 22

Lethargy was a deep snow drift, chill yet at the same time warm, comforting, inviting you down into even more luxurious depths of helplessness, down, to a place before birth, after death.

Mina saw her own death like the snow drift. When she opened her eyes, there were long muslin curtains billowing in the draught from the window. She was too weak to rise. She saw the curtains as her life – the gauzy life that was to be, after the consummation of death.

Dreamily, she recalled remote times, remembered the name of Joe, her Joe. But now there was another lover, the dream lover of legend. He was come again, he was in the chamber, advancing towards the bed.

She tried to rouse herself, to lift her head from the pillow. Her hair spilled about her but there was no strength in her neck. He was bending over her, elegant, powerful, distilling an aroma she drew in through her nostrils like a narcotic. When he opened his red mouth, she found strength enough to open her legs, but his attention was on the flesh of her throat. She felt the lechery of it, breathed deeper, swooned, fidgeted with desire to experience again the bite of those fangs, that sweet evacuation of life.

He in his black garb was something different. The insanity of his fantasy spilled over through their linked alleyways of blood. She saw, felt, lived the secret world of the Undead to which she would soon belong.

It was being transferred, his bridal gift to her —

The great sweltering herbivorous beast dashed from the river bank, sounding alarm to other hadrosaurs grazing nearby. It was a mottled green in coloration, yellow and white on the tender belly, with an elaborate headcomb. It balanced its ponderous body on graceful legs, and gave its melancholy call as it ran. Mina heard herself scream, saw her companions scatter, and white birds sail up in alarm from the Cretaceous marshes.

She took evasive action, running from side to side, yet still hearing the hot breath of pursuit.

‘What’s your name, and where’s Joe gone?’

‘You must forget Joe. You now have an immortal lover.’

Indeed, she heard his footsteps close. Thud thud thud. Screaming, she ran into a gingko grove, thinking to evade the heavier predator that way. Behind her, too near her tail, the wretched sound of branches being snapped like teeth breaking from a bottom jaw.

‘Where did you come from? Tell me who you are, so I can know you.’

‘Beyond your imagining lies the ancient burial site in a once-green land. It was destroyed. Remote ancestors there have been disturbed in their rest.’

‘What’s this to me? Why can I not breathe?’

‘The Living have desecrated those graves, causing a crisis among us, the Undead. You might say a religious crisis.’

She heard the ghost of something too desiccated to call a laugh. It came again, from the sky. It brought a new alarm. For she had left the carnivore behind. She had been driven from the family. Now there was a new threat. As a shadow fell over her, she looked up, craning her neck, her throat. A pteranodon was swooping down upon her, wings closed to speed its dive.

‘Why don’t you take me? Why delay so long? Will I be immortal in your embrace?’

‘You will be immortal in my embrace.’

‘It’s all I ever dream of …’

And as she looked up at those fangs, she fell and sprawled among ferns and it unfolded its spectacular wings —

And with the last of her strength she threw back the bedclothes to expose herself utterly —

And it closed its jaws about her neck —

And as his mouth tasted her flesh and the current flowed —

And as she fought with death —

And Mina began to writhe and moan and come at last —

Through —

‘Yes, Mr Bodenland, that was when we were staying with the duke. And later we were so proud, because the Prince of Wales came backstage and shook Bram’s hand.’

‘It was during the run of The Corsican Brothers.’

‘Edward. HRH. He’s such a dear – and rather a one for the ladies, I’m given to understand.’ Florence Stoker fanned her cheeks with her hand at the thought of it.

‘HRH works hard, and so I suppose he feels entitled to play hard. Do you work hard when you’re – at home?’

‘Some would say, too hard. But a man’s work is one way in which he establishes his identity.’

She sighed. ‘Perhaps that is why we poor ladies have no identity to speak of.’ And she shot a glance at her husband.

Bodenland would have preferred to be alone to think over the implications of the day’s events. He listened with only half an ear to Mrs Stoker’s chatter. They were at the port and cigars stage, sitting about the log fire, under the Bronzino painting, with van Helsing saying little.

Stoker jumped up suddenly, to give his impression of Henry Irving as Mephistopheles.

‘Oh, this is so wicked! Bram, desist!’ cried his wife.

‘Please, sir – your heart,’ said van Helsing. ‘Resume your seat.’

But Stoker would have his way, limping about the hearthrug, at once sinister and comical, reciting in a high chant unlike his own voice:

His faith is great – I cannot touch his soul –

But what I may afflict his body with

That will I do, and stew him in disease …

He interrupted himself with a fit of coughing.

‘What would Henry say? – And him about to be made a knight!’ exclaimed Mrs Stoker.

‘I beg you, to bed at once, sir,’ said van Helsing. ‘It grows late.’

‘No, no, I must continue work on my novel. Must, must. More chapters. Lucy Westenra is in mortal peril –’ And he dashed from the room.

A gloomy silence followed. Van Helsing sat at an escritoire, rather ostentatiously writing something, muttering to himself as he did so. Florence Stoker sat tight-lipped, stabbing at her embroidery until, with a sigh, she abandoned it and rose, to stand by the fire staring at the mantelpiece abstractedly.

‘It’s a fine painting, Mrs Stoker,’ Bodenland said, referring to the Bronzino, to break the silence.

‘It was originally called “An Allegory”,’ she said. ‘Though an allegory of what I fail to see. Something unpleasant to do with … disease, we may suppose.’

The flatness of her tone did not invite response, leaving Bodenland leisure to ponder on the delights and difficulties of family life before, restlessly, she returned to her chair.

Something sought release. She looked at the ceiling to announce, ‘Sometimes he’s shut in his study for hours.’

‘That must make you feel very lonely, Mrs Stoker,’ said Bodenland.

She rose, preparing to retreat for the night, and said, grandly, ‘I can survive anything, Mr Bodenland, except bad taste.’

A few minutes later, van Helsing put away his writing materials. He picked up a candle in a silver candlestick and offered to show Bodenland up to his room.

‘You seem to be rather a romancer, sir,’ he remarked, as he led the way upstairs. ‘Your presence clearly disturbs Mr Stoker.’

‘What if the man’s soul is being destroyed?’

‘Ha ha, I think I may claim to be a man of science. This is 1896, after all, and the “soul” has been pretty well disproved. Men get on famously without souls. We turn left at the top of the stairs.’

‘Well, suppose it was possible to travel through time, to the years ahead, to obtain medicine for Stoker’s condition?’

Another dry laugh. ‘You are a romancer, indeed. Just along here. Most facts of science are known by this date. Winged flight may become possible in a couple of centuries, but travel through space or time – quite impossible. Quite impossible. I’ll stake my reputation on it. Here we are. I’ll leave you the candle. Let’s just see all’s well, and the windows properly fastened.’

Bodenland entered the dark bedroom first, conscious of the fatigue brought on by the events of the last many hours.

The bedroom was warm. A small gas fire burned in the grate. He lit the gas mantle over the mantelpiece from his candle, thinking incredulously as he did so, I’m lighting a real gas mantle …

A woman’s taste was in evidence. There were frills round the curtains and round the wash-stand. Over the bed was a pokerwork text in a wooden Oxford frame: Thou Shalt Not be Afraid for Any Terror by Night. Psalm XCI.

While he was taking in these details, the doctor was checking the window catches and adjusting the chain of garlic across the panes.

On the wall by the door hung a map of the world in Mercator’s projection, framed by the flags of the nations, enlivened by pictures of battleships. The British Empire was coloured in red, and encompassed a quarter of the globe.

Pointing to the map, in the glass of which the gas light was reflected, Bodenland asked, ‘Would you suppose there was once a time when Hudson Bay didn’t exist, doctor?’

Van Helsing looked askance, as if he suspected a trick question.

‘Hudson’s Bay didn’t exist – until it was discovered by an Englishman in the seventeenth century.’

Bidding Bodenland a good night, he left the room, and closed the door quietly behind him.

Slowly removing his jacket, Bodenland tried to take in his present situation. He found the room, large though it was, oppressive. Oil paintings of Highland cattle in ornate gilt frames occupied much of the wall space. On the bedside table stood a carafe of drinking water and a black-bound New Testament. He sat on the bed to remove his shoes, and then lay back, hands linked under his head. He began to think of Mina and of his pretty new daughter-in-law, Kylie. But would he ever be able to control the time train and get back to them?

His eyes closed.

Without any seeming discontinuity, the processes in his mind continued, leading him to leave the house he was in and descend some steps. The steps were outside, leading down a rank hillside fringed by tall cypresses; then they curved, broken and dangerous, into a crypt. The air became moist and heavy. He searched for somewhere to put down a burdensome parcel he was carrying. The underground room seemed enormous. A stained glass window let in a pattern of moonlight which hung like a curtain in the waxy atmosphere.

‘No problem so far,’ he or someone else said, as he seated himself in a chair.

Three maidens in diaphanous robes stood in the moonlight. They beckoned. All were beautiful. The middle one was the most beautiful. The coloured glass threw warm gules on her fair breast.

It was this middle creature who advanced on Bodenland, drawing aside her white robe as she came. Her smile was remote, her gaze unfixed.

He knew her and called her name, ‘Kylie! Come to me.’

He saw – with shut eyes but acute mental vision – the pale and loving woman who had so recently become his daughter-in-law. For those beautiful features, those soft limbs, that sensuous body with its delectable secrets, lust filled Joe’s body.

As he opened his arms to her, she bent eagerly towards him, letting the long dress fall away. He caught her scent, like a forgotten dream.

Now her arms were almost round his neck. He felt them intensely, was filled with rapture, when a pistol shot rang out.

Kylie was gone. The stony structure of the crypt faded.

He was back on the bed, his arms tingling with cramp behind his head. The long-horned cattle stared at him from the walls of the room.

He sat up, sick, cold. Had he heard a real shot?

Rising, he padded over to the window and drew aside a curtain a little way.

Two moons shone over the haunting nineteenth-century landscape, one in a clear night sky, the other its sister, its reflection, in the ornamental pool. The gazebo was a ghostly thing, its Chinese chimes not stirring. On the terrace, the statues stood in their dramatic attitudes, casting their shadows towards the facade of the old house.

Among the statues was a human figure. It was Stoker, his ginger coloration made snowy by the moon.

Breaking the chain of garlic flowers, Bodenland opened the window and leaned out.

‘What’s the matter? I thought I heard a shot.’

Stoker looked up, his features made brutal in the diffused glow.

‘Keep your voice down. You aren’t going to be too bucked with this, Bodenland. I’ve had to perform a soldierly duty. As I was turning in I heard a bit of thumping, armed myself, and came out here to see what the devil was going on.’

‘The driver …’

‘That’s it – your driver. He emerged through the door. Like a ghost. One of the Undead, my boy! I put a silver bullet through him in self-defence. It’s the only thing that stops his kind.’

‘I’ll come down.’

The window next to Bodenland’s was thrown open and van Helsing thrust his head out into the night air. He was wearing a night cap.

‘Now we’re in trouble – real trouble, you understand? What are you going to do with the body? You’ll be charged with murder.’

‘I’ll come down, Bram,’ said Bodenland. It was the first time he had used his host’s Christian name.

‘Better stay where you are. There’s another presence out here.’

‘What?’

Stoker paused before answering, and glanced about.

‘A woman’s presence. I’ll be in soonest, don’t worry. I’ll heave this damned corpse back into the shed. We’ll worry about it in the morning.’

‘Are you frightened?’

‘Heroism, Bodenland, what we were talking about. Get to bed, and sweet dreams. And you, doctor.’

Bodenland withdrew his head and closed the window, but stood looking at the silent terrace. When Stoker disappeared, dragging the corpse, he returned to bed. But hope of sleep had been shattered.

Although he admired Stoker’s courage, he still could not persuade himself to believe in vampires. His experience told him they existed, his intellect denied it. Of course, that paradox played to the advantage of vampires, if they existed. But they did exist – and somehow below the level of human intellect.

He paced about the room, trying to work it out. The human intellect originated in the neocortex, the grey matter of the brain. Below lay deeper layers, much older on an evolutionary scale than the neocortex – layers of brain common to other mammals, the limbic brain, primed by instincts such as aggression and submission and sexual response: the very instincts which propelled the processes of life on the planet.

Suppose there was a type of creature which was subject to different processes. A creature like a vampire, without intellect, and therefore almost safe from human molestation. The human species would undoubtedly kill off all vampires, as they had almost killed off wolves, if they only could believe wholeheartedly in the idea. Once you got the idea, vampires were not particularly hard to kill – to exterminate. Were they? The silver bullet. The shaft of light. The religious symbol. The stake through the heart.

He stood and stared abstractedly at the pokerwork legend: Thou Shalt Not be Afraid for Any Terror by Night … Nevertheless, the human race was afraid, always had been …

Always had been …

Vampires – if they existed – he could not resist adding the saving clause – were older than mankind.

How much older? Really millions and millions of years older, as Clift’s discovery seemed to prove?

Why were they so feared?

They were a disease.

They brought death. Worse than death, the existence of the Undead. If legend was to be believed.

And they preyed on humankind by activating one of the strongest instincts below the neocortical level, the great archetype of sex.

As a flower attracts by its scent.

His dream … The incestuous dream of union with Kylie, dead or alive. Repugnant to his consciousness, evidently delightful to some more primitive layer of sensation …

Of a sudden, he connected the dream with the female presence which, if Stoker was to be believed, walked on the terrace below.

As he thought of it, of that shadowy thing he was wise to dread, a wave of desire came over him.

He fought it back. ‘The pestilence that walketh in darkness …’ Was that how the rest of the psalm went?

To calm himself, he measured his strides about the bedroom, trying again to think of the problem scientifically.

Why else were vampires so feared?

Because they were parasitical. Parasites were always feared.

If they long preceded humans on the scale of existence, then they had once preyed on other living things.

What had they been – he caught himself avoiding the word – what had vampires been before they became parasitical? Before that dreadful need for blood arose?

Many arthropod bloodsuckers existed – bed bugs, fleas, mosquitoes, ticks, all parasitical on man. As the fossil record proved, those creatures were about in the busy world long before mankind. Even before birds and mammals.

All those little plagues to human life were originally innocent suckers of fruit juice and plant juices. But the taste of blood proved addictive and they had become enslaved by parasitism.

Blood was a dangerous beverage. An addiction like any other drug.

And vampire bats …

So what had vampires been, many millions of years ago, before they became enslaved?

It was a short distance from gnawing on a wound to drinking its substance … From swooping down through the air to being called to swoop … From inciting the dread to inciting the lust …

Almost in a fever, he thought he had glimpsed what turned an aerial predator into the pestilence that walketh in darkness. Sick with the sound and smell of the gas jet, Bodenland went to the window and flung back the curtains, letting moonlight enter the fuggy room. Brushing away the strings of white flowers, he threw open the window and took some lungfuls of air.

The moon still floated upside down in the pool.

Of Stoker there was no sign.

The woman stood there on the terrace, tall against the figure of a putti. She looked up at him, eyes agleam with a cold green fire.

His heart turned over. But his intellect remained cool.

Distantly, the clock in the asylum tower chimed one in the morning.

She lifted her arms and flew up to him.

She was in the bedroom, among the domestic things with her dead eyes, walking, gliding, rather. Close to him – and he staring with his hair standing on end.

‘This is no dream, Joe,’ she said. Her voice was deep and masculine.

She brought a chill to the room. In her whiteness, with something sparkling like frost in her hair, and the wan white robe, all shadowy yet bright – why, he thought, it’s more like a fever than a person, frightening, yes, yet no more dangerous than a ghost … Yet he was in a prickle of lust to be touched by her, to enjoy an intimacy no one knew this side of the grave.

His intellect had no part in this encounter.

Her name was Bella, the name spoken like a bell.

‘What do you want of me?’

‘I know what you want of me, Joe.’ Still the voice was thick, as if there was blood just below the throat. And her lips were red.

She began to talk, and he to listen, entranced.

Her people were ancient and had survived much. When oak trees die, they still stand against the storm. Her exact words never came back to him after; he only recalled – trying to recall more – that she gave an impression of the Undead as being nothing outside nature, as being of nature. Of humans as being the exiled things, cut off from the ancient world, unable to throw themselves into the streams of continuity pouring from the distant past into distant futures. She spoke, and it was in images.

For these reasons humanity was doomed. Men had to be slain for the survival of the ancient planet. Yet she, Bella, had it in her power to save him, Joe. To more than save him: to crown him with eternal life, the great stream of life from which his humanity exiled him. She spoke, and he received a picture of glaciers from which pure rivers flowed, down to teeming future oceans, unpolluted by man.

‘What do I have to do?’ His whisper was like the rustle of leaves.

Bella turned the full beam of her regard upon him. The eyes were red like a dog’s or yellow like a cat’s or green like a polar bear’s – after, he could not remember. They pierced into him, confident, without conscience or consciousness.

‘All Fleet Ones need to attend a great conference which our Lord has called. We are summoned, every one. We must go to the region you call Hudson Bay. There we will finally decide mankind’s fate.’

‘You cannot exist without us.’

‘As we existed once, so we shall again. You’re – but a moment.’

Again a kind of telepathic picture of the highest mountains brimming over with glaciers, slow-growing glaciers crowned with snow. And, by their striped flanks, thorn bushes growing, stiff against the wind.

Oh, it was beautiful. He longed for it. Ached.

‘The great Lord Dracula will guide our decisions. All of us will have a voice. Possibly extermination, possibly total enslavement. All of you penned within …’

She named a place. Had she said ‘green land’ or ‘Greenland’?

‘Understand this, Joe. We are much stronger than you can imagine. As we possessed the past, so we are in possession of the far future.’

‘The present? You’re nothing, Bella.’

‘We must have back the time train. You have to surrender it. That is what you have to do, and only that, in order that we become immortal lovers, borne on the storm of ages, like Paolo and Francesca.’

While she said these things and uttered these inhuman promises, she lightly roamed the room, as a tiger might pace.

He watched. She gave no reflection as she passed the mirror on the dressing-table or the glazed map of the British Empire, or any of the pictures which lay behind glass.

He sat on the side of the bed, unable to control his trembling.

‘What does this mean – you possess the future?’

‘No more talk, Joe. Talk’s the human skill. Forget the future when we can together savour the present.’

The dark voice ceased. She unfolded great wings and moved towards him.

Something in her movements woke in Bodenland the promptings of a forgotten dream. All that came back to him was a picture of the thing that had rushed towards him down the corridor of the time train, covering infinite distance with infinite speed. He had time to appreciate the gloomy chamber in which, it seemed, every vertical was ashily outlined by the glare of the gas, caging him into this block of past existence, until the very scent of her, the frisson of her garments, drowned out all other impressions.

She stood by him, over him, as he remained sitting on the side of the bed, arms behind him to prop his torso as he gazed up at her face. The red lips moved and she spoke again.

‘I know of your strength. Eternal life is here if you wish it. Eternal life and eternal love.’

His mouth was almost too dry to speak. He could force no derision into his voice. ‘Forbidden love.’

‘Forbidden by your kind, Joe, not mine.’

And with a great rustle of wings, she embraced him, pressing him into folds of the eiderdown.

Even as his body’s blood flowed thick and heavy with delight, he was also living out a vision. It was antique yet imperishable, like something engraved on stone. It flowed from Bella to him.

Bella’s memory was of what would one day be called Hudson Bay, and a chill part of Canada. Now the clouds rolled back like peeling skin and heat roared like breath. In the fairer climate of seventy million years past, what would be water and ice and drifting floes was all land, bush-speckled savannah or forest. The kneedeep grasses were rich to the teeth of great blundering herbivores – hadrosaurs that grazed by slow-winding rivers, brontosaurs that blundered into the marsh by the rivers.

These and other ornithischians were herded into pens and thorncages by the Fleet Ones, who arrived on wing and foot. They drove their captives, fat with blood and blubber, into the makeshift fields, from which they would be culled.

The savannah fills with their numbers. The beasts lumber and cry. The ground heaves.

The bed heaves. Bodenland cries aloud.

Larry was in an absolute rage. He shook with it. The mortician had said, ‘I don’t think you should take your mother’s death like that, sir. We must show respect for the dead,’ and Larry had brushed the little man aside.

He ran out of the parlour to the sidewalk, cursing and gesticulating. Kylie followed reluctantly, her pretty face pale and drawn.

In the cheerful morning sunlight, the main street of Enterprise was choked with traffic, mainly rubberneckers come to see what was going on at Old John, lured by the news that mankind’s history had been overturned. The cars moved so slowly that both drivers and passengers had plenty of time to watch this man performing on the sidewalk, under the mortician’s sign. Many called insults, thinking they knew a drunk when they saw one.

‘Stop it, Larry, will you?’ Kylie seized his arm. ‘Come on, I’ll drive you back to the motel.’

‘What have I done, Kylie? What have I done? I’m going to hang one on in the nearest bar, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.’

‘No, please … It would be better to pray. Prayer gives you more strength than whisky.’

He appeared not to have heard her.

‘That was my momma lying in there, all white and withered. Stuck in that freezer …’ Tears rolled down his face. ‘Like some little pressed flower she was, her colour all faded …’

‘Larry, darling, I know, I know. It’s terrible. Poor Mina. But getting drunk won’t help it one bit …’

Cajoling, crying herself, Kylie managed to persuade her husband back to the convertible. Wiping her tears, she managed the slow drive to the Moonlite Motel. The management had been insensitive enough to offer them Mina’s old room. No other was available, owing to the unexpected influx of sightseers. They took it. In the hastily cleared room, Kylie found in the waste can a crumpled sheet of notepaper. On it her late mother-in-law had begun a letter. ‘Joe you bastard —’

‘What I fail to understand,’ said Larry, heading straight for the mini-bar, ‘is what this “Premature Ageing” bit means. I don’t trust the Utah doctors – probably bribed by the motel. Hon, go down the corridor and get some ice, will you?’

She stood before him. ‘I love you, Larry, and I need your support. Don’t you see I’m still trembling? But you are like a greedy child. Your parents neglected you, yes, I know, I’ve heard it a million times. So you keep on grabbing, grabbing, just like a baby. You grabbed. Okay, so you want to keep me, so you must stop being a baby and grabbing for these other things.’

‘You ever hear of a baby drinking the old Wild Turkey, hon? I’m never going to get over the death of my mom, because I should have taken better care of her. She loved me. She loved me, Kylie. Something my father never did.’

‘Larry!’ She screamed his name. ‘Please forget about yourself! Worry about what happened to Mina. What the hell are we going to do? All human love has its failings, okay, but Joe does love you, best he knows how. But he’s missing —’

‘I’ll go and get the ice myself, don’t you worry.’ He stood up. ‘You always take Joe’s side. I’m used to that by now, and I’m going to get a drink while you yack, if you must.’

She went over to her suitcase, which lay on the bed. She had opened it without unpacking it. They had checked in only an hour ago and gone straight from the motel to the funeral parlour.

‘I’m yacking no more, husband of mine. I just can’t get through to you. I’ve had enough. I’m off. You quit on me in Hawaii. Now I’m quitting on you in Enterprise, Utah.’

She snapped the suitcase shut. As she made for the door, Larry ran in front of her. Kylie swung the suitcase hard and hit him in the stomach.

Gasping, he made way for her.

When she had gone, Larry walked doubled up to the sofa, making what he could of the pain. After sufficient gasping, he picked up the quart bottle of Wild Turkey he had brought with him in his case. Lifting it high until it gleamed in the light from the window Kylie had opened, he saluted it.

‘Only you and me now, old friend,’ he said.

Later, he staggered out and got himself a hamburger from the Chock Full O’ Nuts next to the Moonlite. Later still, he pulled down the blind at the window to keep out the glare of the sun. Later still, he placed the empty whisky bottle on the window sill and fell into a heavy slumber, snoring with practised ease.

Evening set in. The neon sign blinked outside, registering the minutes. Cars came and went in the parking lot. Larry slept on, uneasy in dream.

It seemed his mother visited him, to stand before him bloodlessly, with red eyes. She cried to him for comfort. She bent over him, her movements, gradual, so as not to startle.

Oh, she whispered, Larry was her dear son – so dear. Now she needed him more than ever.

The evening breeze blew the blind. It flapped inward, striking the empty whisky bottle. It tapped intermittently. The bottle fell to the floor, clattering.

Larry woke in a fright. He sat up, groaning, clutching his head, and looked round the darkened room. ‘Mother?’

He was alone.

The glorious summer’s day bathed the facade of Bram Stoker’s residence. A row of newly planted copper beeches shielding the house from the lane gleamed in the early morning sunshine as if they were copper indeed, newly polished by the housemaid.

The carriage, with its two chestnut horses, stood in the drive before the front door. Stoker emerged, resplendent in top hat, chatting happily. He was followed by Joe Bodenland, walking slowly and saying nothing. His face was lifeless and ashen. Stoker helped him into the carriage.

Mrs Stoker was standing by the herbaceous border, talking to Spinks, the young gardener. She too was dressed in all her finery and, after a minute, came over to the carriage and was assisted aboard by James, the driver.

‘Spinks is worried about the blackspot on the roses,’ she said. ‘And so am I.’

The wheels of the carriage crackled over the gravel as they drove off.

‘The blue flowers in the border are pretty, dear. What are they?’

‘Yes, they’re doing better this year. Lobelia syphilitica. Such a funny name.’

When they turned out of the drive and headed down the hill, the spires and towers of London became visible. The great occasion made both Stoker and his wife nervous. They spent the journey primping each other, brushing away imaginary dust from one another’s clothes, and adjusting their hair. They worried about what they would do while the investiture was taking place. Bodenland sat in his place, somewhat shrunken, speaking only when addressed.

The carriage took them to the splendid rail terminal of Paddington Station, built by one of the Queen’s more ingenious subjects, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The station master came forward and installed Stoker’s party in a first class carriage.

Stoker sat back, tilted his topper at a rakish angle, and lit a large cigar.

At Windsor, bunting decorated the station and a silver band played. They were met by an equerry of the Queen and escorted in style to the palace, over which the Union Jack flew lazily in the sun.

When their brougham rolled into the yard of the Castle, a clock was chiming a quarter hour after eleven. They were in good time for the investiture at twelve noon. A platoon of household guards was on parade, and a band played lively airs. Mrs Stoker clapped her gloved hands in pleasure.

‘Capital chaps,’ agreed Stoker, nodding towards the uniformed bandsmen. ‘Pity your pater isn’t here to see them, Flo.’

Crowds stared in at the gates, while children waved small paper Union Jacks.

They were assisted ceremoniously from the carriage. Their company was escorted to a reception room, where other celebrated names lounged about in nonchalant attitudes and medals, smoking if possible. Irving himself joined them in a few minutes, and Bodenland was introduced.

Henry Irving walked with a long stride, perhaps to make himself look taller than he was. He had the appearance of a great famished wolf. The hair on his magnificent head was liberally streaked with white, long, and raggedly cut, lending something bohemian to his person. He swung his famous brow towards the assembled company to make sure he was recognized, then turned all his attention to Stoker and his companions.

‘I’m friendly with your compatriot, Mark Twain,’ Irving said. ‘I met him when we were doing our recent tour of America. Very amusing man.’

He sat down next to them and drummed his fingers on his top hat.

‘No chance of a drink here, Henry,’ Stoker said.

But coffee was served in porcelain cups which Mrs Stoker greatly admired. She persevered in admiring everything in sight.

In due time, they were shown into a splendid scarlet reception room. The furnishings consisted of stiff-backed chairs at one end and a plain throne on a dais at the other. Apart from this, a few lavishly framed oils of battle scenes hanging on the walls were the only decoration. In an adjoining room, light music was being played by a quartet.

Queen Victoria was escorted into the room at the far end. She seated herself on the throne without ostentation. She was a small dumpy woman, dressed in black with a blue sash running over one shoulder. She dispensed half-a-dozen knighthoods with a ceremonial sword, displaying nothing that could be interpreted as intense interest in the proceedings. As etiquette decreed, she made no conversation with her newly honoured subjects as they rose from their knees.

It was Irving’s turn. He ascended the three shallow steps and knelt before his Queen. She tapped him on both shoulders with the sword.

‘We were much amused, Sir Henry,’ she said, and smiled.

‘Ooh, she smiled,’ Mrs Stoker whispered in her husband’s ear.

He nodded vigorously.

The playing of the national anthem concluded the ceremony.

Afterwards, as they left the Castle with Irving, the talk was all of the Queen’s smile. There was general agreement that it was wonderful, and that she looked extremely well for her age.

Mrs Stoker turned to Bodenland.

‘You’ve had little to say on this truly memorable occasion, sir. What did you make of it all? A fine tale you’ll have to take back to Mrs Borderland. I warrant you have nothing so impressive in America.’

‘That may be so, madam. We have no royalty in our country, being a republic. All this display you see, this great castle – is it not paid for out of the pockets of the average Britisher? And your Queen – I mean no offence, but is it not the English poor who keep her in luxury?’

‘That’s plain silly, Joe,’ said Stoker. ‘The Queen’s a very spartan lady. Eats almost nothing since the Prince Consort died.’

‘Are you telling us America has no poor?’ said Florence.

‘I didn’t say that, Mrs Stoker. Of course we have poor, but the poor have hope. They may – I use an old-fashioned phrase – raise themselves from log cabin to White House. Whereas I doubt if any of the English poor have ever raised themselves to the throne from Whitechapel.’

‘You look unwell, Mr Borderland,’ said Florence, stiffly.

The ceremony was followed by a grand luncheon, held in the banqueting rooms off Whitehall, and attended by no less a figure than the Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery.

As usual, Bram Stoker had to stay close to Irving, but he came over to his new friend’s side once, to introduce him to Irving’s leading lady, Ellen Terry. Ellen Terry’s brother Fred, also an actor, was with her, but Bodenland was able to spare no glance for him.

Ellen Terry was simply the most beautiful woman he had ever set eyes on. She wore a saffron silk dress, with hand-woven designs consisting of many-coloured threads and little jewels. The dress went with her striking colouring and eyes that – he could only feel it – looked at him and understood him. Bodenland was so overwhelmed by this sensation, entirely new to him, that he was unable to say anything sensible. He remembered afterwards only a certain manner in which she held her head, as if at once proud and modest. He remembered the way her mouth – that delightful mouth – moved, but not what it said.

Then she turned to speak to someone else. In a phrase Bram Stoker used later, Ellen Terry was like embodied sunshine.

But her amiable brother Fred stayed a moment and pointed out some notables to Bodenland as they assembled round the table.

‘That feller with the green lapels to his jacket is a compatriot of yours, Edwin Abbey. Good artist but, being American, won’t end up in the Abbey.’ He laughed at his own joke, treating the whole affair like a kind of horse-race. ‘See whom he’s shaking hands with? That’s the old war horse, Alma Tadema – he’s pipped Henry at the post, he’s already a knight. Wonderful painter, he entirely redesigned the Roman toga for Henry’s Coriolanus … Ah, now, coming up on the straight – see that lady with the turban and the slightly too grand osprey feathers? That’s none other than Mrs Perugini, daughter of the late lamented Charles Dickens, novelist. The serious-looking gent embracing Bram … that’s one of his best friends, Hall Caine – another novelist, happily still with us.

‘Oh, here’s a treat!’ Fred Terry exclaimed, as a wild-looking man with a great streaming head of hair burst into the room and flung his arms about Irving. ‘It’s the Polish musical genius of the age. Paderewski. They’re chums, as you can tell. Quite a romantic chappie, by all accounts.’ Indeed, when the guests were all seated, and before the commencement of the meal, Paderewski was prevailed upon to position himself at the grand piano and play a minuet of his own composition, attacking the keys with as much spirit as if he did so on behalf of the whole Polish people.

After wild applause, the new knight rose and made a speech, also wildly applauded, after which he gave his famous rendering of ‘The Bells’, the dramatic story of a man haunted by the undetected murder he had committed. Tumultuous applause. Ellen Terry sat between Irving and Lord Rosebery, and smiled like an angel.

Then the banquet began.

Enormous amounts of food were supplied by bustling waiters, bearing with aplomb the loaded dishes in and the emptied dishes out. Wine rose in such a tide in cut-glass goblets that men in their dinner jackets grew apoplectic, with cheeks as scarlet as the Bordeaux.

Slightly awed by the gargantuan consumption, Bodenland picked at his food and sipped at his claret. Florence Stoker, seated next to him, regaled him with tales of the Balcombe family.

Evidently she found him unresponsive.

‘Are you one of those men who regards a woman’s conversation as inconsequential?’ she asked, as a towering confection resembling a Mont Blanc built of sponge, brandy, and icing sugar was set before them.

‘On the contrary, ma’am. I wish it were otherwise.’

He could not stop glancing at Ellen Terry; she altered his whole feeling towards the nineteenth century.

When finally they staggered out into the light of a London day, with dim sunlight slanting through the plane trees, it was to be met by a throng of beggars, importuning for food or money.

Taking Bodenland’s elbow, Stoker steered him through the outstretched hands. Bodenland looked with pity on the cadaverous faces, pale but lit with burning eyes, the rags they wore like cerements. He wondered if Stoker had drawn his picture of the Undead from this melancholy company, which swarmed in its thousands through the underworld of London.

Seeing his interest, Stoker stopped and accosted one small lad, bare of legs and feet, who held out a bony hand to them. Picking a coin from his pocket, Stoker asked the boy what he did for a living.

‘I was a pure-finder, guv, following me father’s trade. But times is hard, owing to competition from over the other side. Spare a copper, guv, bless you.’

He got the copper, and made off fast down a side street.

‘What’s a pure-finder?’ Bodenland asked, as they climbed into their carriage.

‘Pure’s dog shit,’ said Stoker, shielding the word from his wife with his topper. ‘The urchin probably works for the tanners over Bermondsey way. They use the shit for tanning leather. I hear it’s a profitable occupation.’

‘The boy was starving.’

‘You can’t go by looks.’

They returned home in the evening. Lights were already on in the house as James led the horses away to the stable.

A great to-do went on in the hall with the removal of outer garments and the fussing of van Helsing, who was anxious to see that the outing had inflicted no harm on his charge. He managed to circumnavigate Stoker twice by the time the latter entered the drawing room and flung himself down in an armchair under the Bronzino.

Stoker tugged vigorously at the bellrope for wine.

‘What a day, to be sure,’ he said. ‘It’s a day of great honour to the whole of the acting profession, no less. Wouldn’t you agree, Joe?’

Joe had gone over to the window to look at the daylight lingering in the garden.

‘How beautiful Ellen Terry is,’ he said, dreamily.

While the manservant was pouring wine, van Helsing ran over to Stoker’s chair and sank down beside it on one knee, somewhat in the attitude Irving had assumed a few hours previously. He rolled up Stoker’s sleeve and administered an injection from a large silver syringe.

Stoker made a face.

‘It’s my friend here who needs your ministry, Van,’ said Stoker. Getting up, he went over to where Bodenland was standing, looking out towards the woods. As Bodenland turned, Stoker saw the two tell-tale marks at his throat, and understood.

‘Better get some iodine, Van. Mr Bodenland cut himself shaving.’ He led Bodenland over to a comfortable chair and made him sit down. After standing looking compassionately down at him, he snapped his fingers. ‘I know what you need.’

In a minute, after probing in the wine cabinet, he brought forth a wine glass full of a red liquid and gave it to Joe.

‘What’s this? Wine?’

‘Laudanum. Do you a power of good and all.’

‘My god … Well, it is 1896 …’ He sipped it slowly and felt some of the lassitude leave him.

‘You should get out of here at once, Joe. You’re a marked man. I know I’ve helped to delay you, but I see now you should make for home on the morrow, sure as eggs are eggs.’

Bodenland stood up, a little shakily. He took a deep breath.

‘I’m okay, or near enough. Allow me to make you a small speech, since you’ve both been so kind and hospitable. Despite my experiences on the way to England – and I’ve hardly dared tell you of the full strangeness of that journey – I have fought with myself to deny the reality of … of vampires. To be honest, I thought they were a fiction invented for the novel you are about to finish. Even when you talked about them, I kind of reckoned you mad. Now I know you’re not mad.’

‘Heaven be praised! It’s myself that’s always thinking I’m mad, or going that way.’

‘And I’m glad of your reassurance, Mr Bodenland,’ said Florence, getting his name right in gratitude.

‘Thanks. Let me finish my speech. Of course I still worry about my wife, Mina, and my family. I can’t resist the intuition that some dreadful thing may have happened to her. But – hell, Bram, after my experience last night I know it would be cowardice to just up and quit now, and go home as if nothing had happened. I let down my old buddy Bernard Clift. Well, I’m not about to let down my new buddy as well. I’m staying, and we’ll fight this foul thing together.’

To his surprise, Stoker flung his arms about him.

‘You’re a dear feller, sure you are.’ He shook Bodenland’s hand warmly. ‘It’s a brave decision you’ve made.’

Mrs Stoker ran up, casting her embroidery hoop on the carpet, and kissed him on the cheek.

‘I don’t want you getting my husband into trouble, now, but you spoke up like a man – like a soldier. We shall drink a sherry now, to toast you.’

‘And we’ll have a cigar,’ said Stoker. ‘At least, I will.’

This response excited Joe into a less lethargic state.

‘We won’t delay. I may be no Christian, but this is a kind of Christian quest.’ As he spoke, he took a New Testament from a side table and waved it aloft as if in proof. ‘We start tomorrow.’

‘And we prepare tonight,’ said Stoker, through his cigar.

When Stoker was out of the room, his wife came to Bodenland’s side.

‘My dear father was full of wisdom – as befitted a man who was a Lieutenant Colonel and served in the Crimea. One thing he told me was that many impossible things happen. The important thing is to decide which impossible things to believe and which not to.’

‘Sound advice, ma’am.’

‘My father’s advice was always sound. I’m undecided as yet about your impossibilities, but I’d like to ask you, if I may – supposing it were somehow possible to venture into the future, as one ventures into London – would I be able to establish if dear Bram’s latest novel will be a success?’ She laughed, as if thinking it was a silly question for a colonel’s daughter to ask.