Anne Perry - A Christmas Homecoming

He looked at her intensely for several seconds. “Do you love acting?” he asked impulsively. “I mean … I mean, really love it? So you would be wretched if you couldn’t?”

She lowered her eyes, then looked up at him with a sweet smile. “No, not at all. It’s quite fun, and I like the friendship we have, almost like a family, but I’d still rather have a real family, a husband and children. I think most women would, perhaps not all …” She left the idea unfinished, as if it were too indelicate to complete.

He sighed and leaned back in his seat.

Caroline heard Eliza Netheridge breathe in sharply and turned to meet her eyes, feeling as if she knew her thoughts. She had had three daughters herself. Sarah, her eldest, had died some time ago, in circumstances that still touched her with horror. Charlotte, the second and by far the most awkward, had met the man she would eventually marry because of the manner of Sarah’s death. Caroline had almost despaired of Charlotte’s happiness, and yet in some ways Charlotte had enriched all their lives through her choice of husband in a way that no one else in the family had. Emily, the youngest, had married brilliantly the first time, then had been widowed, and was now happily married again. But Caroline knew exactly what Eliza was suffering. She smiled at her now.

“I wouldn’t bother saying anything to her, if I were you,” she said very quietly, so there was no chance of anyone else overhearing her. “Just now, it would only make it worse. I have a daughter whose nature is not unlike Alice’s. She is about as biddable as a domestic cat. I don’t know if you have ever tried to make a cat do anything it didn’t wish to?”

Eliza smiled in spite of herself. “Quite pointless,” she replied. “But I’m still fond of them, and they are both affectionate and very useful in the house.”

“So are willful daughters, when they are good at heart.” Caroline nodded.

Eliza sighed. “Alice is good, but she will lose that young man if she is not kinder to him. I’m sorry if she is a friend of yours, but that young Miss Rye has her eyes on Douglas—I don’t know with what intent, to win him, or merely for the fun of playing, like a cat with a mouse, to continue your domestic likeness.”

“From what I know of her, quite possibly to win him.” Caroline surprised herself by the sincerity of her answer. She realized as she spoke how many times she had seen Lydia a little apart from the others, in mood if not in physical presence. The stage, and even the admiration and love of the audience, did not satisfy some far greater need in her. And quite possibly she wanted what Alice had more than Alice wanted it herself.

“Do you really think so?” Eliza asked. “And then what will Alice do?”

Caroline smiled, but there was an edge of apprehension in it. “Judging from what I have seen of her so far, whatever she wants to. And if the cost is high, she will have the courage to meet it.”

“Oh, dear,” Eliza said, biting her lip. “I was afraid that was what you were going to say.”

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.