A Christmas Homecoming - Anne Perry [30]
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.