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‘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.’
