Moon Rising (50 page)

Bram shrugged, reached for his glass, said the matter had become a forbidden topic. ‘No. And it was never explained – at least not in any way that made sense. The deal was done while he was ill – obviously he was worried about finance – but it was the haste with which he did it...

‘I still think it was deliberate,' he added, explaining that Irving didn't want anyone to know that he'd sold out to a syndicate, not until the deal was complete. ‘It was madness – despite the fire, the Lyceum itself was still a going concern. I could have secured far better terms – if only he'd trusted me, given me an inkling of what was going on. But it was all done just as I was leaving for New York...'

Biting my tongue on something worse, I said it was a pity he and Ellen and the rest hadn't bailed out and left him to it; but Bram shook his head.

‘It was only a matter of time, Damaris – we all knew he was a sick man.'

‘He betrayed you,' I reminded him.

Quiet for a while, seeming to ponder the truth of that, he said with difficulty: ‘In a sense, yes, he did. But I couldn't abandon him at his lowest ebb – I had to stay and see him through. I owed him that.'

‘Bram, for heaven's sake – after all you'd given, you owed him nothing!'

‘You say that, Damaris, but he and the Lyceum had been my life. Not easy, I'll grant you that, but then whose life is? We were managing perfectly well until...' He rubbed his eyes, and for a moment seemed so despairing I could have wept for him.

‘It was the book, you see – somehow, with
Dracula
, I knew I'd had a hand in his fall.'

I made a vague protest; but at heart I understood. At the time of the fire, I'd felt it too, that connection between Irving and the destruction of the Count.

‘Disaster following disaster,' he said slowly, ‘until it began to seem rather more than just a series of unfortunate coincidences. It was all so unnerving, I began to look over my shoulder while walking home at night. I felt my heart pounding at every potential threat. It was as though we'd been granted our successes, and now we were paying the price.'

‘As though unseen moneylenders were calling in the chips,' I concluded.

‘Like Faust's contract with Mephistopheles...'

He went on to say, with evident discomfort, that he felt haunted by those events, and guilty too, because he'd resented the way success had turned Irving from friend into despot; he'd even wished him ill at times, if only that he might be taught a much-needed lesson. He'd wanted things to go wrong, just so that Irving could see who his real friends were; to prove that he, Bram, would still be by his side, even in adversity.

‘But it doesn't work like that, does it?' he commented quietly.

I watched his face, his eyes, the sadness of his mouth, and knew his pain, his sense of guilt. ‘No,' I said, ‘it doesn't. We have to be careful what we wish for.'

‘When everything fell down, I was crushed too. And I couldn't get over the feeling that I was the one who'd brought it about.

‘It was the book,' he said again, taking a deep breath. ‘Somehow, evil was written into it – inadvertently, perhaps, but it rebounded on all of us. I don't know why, but what was intended to be a simple vampire tale turned into something else along the way, and, once it was complete, it seemed to take on a life of its own – as though I was merely a vehicle, a medium through which it could be told.

‘I don't think it matters that good won out in the end,' he added. ‘Well, yes, it does matter, because good
has
to keep evil in check – and has to be seen to do so. But it seems my writing gave it life, allowed it to flex its muscles – gave it a chance to work its mischief. Nothing too dramatic, of course – an accident here, a fire there, deaths, doubts, arguments, betrayals...'

I shivered, but not just with fear. Something primitive inside me was unpleasantly satisfied to know that Irving got his comeuppance in the end, that he was paid back for all the pain he'd cost me. And Bram. And Florence. And the boy, Noel. I didn't much care who caused it or what the vehicle was. I understood instinctively what Bram meant about evil rebounding. I thought of Irving's powerful personality, and that mesmeric quality he had, which I'd experienced that day at the cottage. The elements of attraction and repulsion were part of him, as direct and disturbing as the presence of the Count in Bram's novel.

‘Whatever caused his luck to turn,' I said brusquely, ‘Irving had talent as well as power – and as you say, he abused both, in a direct and very personal way. He used people and cast them aside. He betrayed your friendship, your loyalty, your talent...And as a matter of foolish pride,' I added with forced laughter, ‘he even turned down an absolute
gift
of a part...'

Resisting the urge to heap further coals upon the man, I said, ‘Who knows? Maybe the old Count couldn't bear the insult – maybe he did wreak his revenge, after all...'

We parted a little after midnight, to go to our respective beds. Bram assured me that he felt better than for many a month, and was sure to sleep, but I was not so confident. I found myself tossing and turning, thinking of the past. In that embrace before we parted, I'd been very much aware of wanting him to stay. Not to indulge in the antics of twenty years ago, not even because I was lonely – which I was – but to be assured of his warmth, his lasting affection, and even to offer him something of myself in return.

Looking back on that summer I could see how in the passion of youth I'd rejected good sense and good upbringing, everything, in fact, that I knew to be straight and sensible and the accepted way. The accepted way was not for me, and was probably never intended to be, but in the course of finding a more amenable path I'd taken a detour that might easily have proved fatal.

When it came to Bram, I couldn't blame fate or even ignorance entirely. I'd embraced that liaison with my eyes open, unblinkered by anything beyond the desire to be admired and indulged, to break the rules and find my own level, and in the process to cock a snook at the staid moral values my background represented. Ultimately, life, fate, doom or whatever, had decreed the price I was to pay in return. It might have seemed severe but, to counter that, Bram's generosity had provided my passport to another world. Whether the money was directly his or lent by Irving, no longer mattered. The point was, Bram hadn't abandoned me entirely, but taken care of me in the only way that was open to him at the time. He hadn't seduced me, either. Initially I'd made love to him, and the decision to seek out Nan Mills had been mine, not his. Irving had altered the balance, but there had been compensations, even for being childless. I had no right to complain that life had been unfair.

All in all, I was immensely glad that Bram and I had met again. Our conversations had balanced the scales. Especially when it came to Irving.

And I kept coming back to Irving, that shadowy figure in the wings of my life. I couldn't help going over those last years when he was so beset by illness, yet still working, still touring, eventually making a very professional exit during his farewell tour of the country. After playing
Becket
at the Theatre Royal, Bradford, the great actor had collapsed, dying shortly afterwards in the foyer of his hotel.

It was the 13
^th
of October, and a Friday.

So elegantly stage-managed, I remember thinking at the time, just like his funeral service, held in Westminster Abbey with representatives of the royal family in attendance. But although his friends could be proud of that honour, for Bram, Irving's death had been like losing a brother. After all those years, the sudden emptiness had been filled with unexpected grief for other losses. Bereaved and despairing, finding it difficult to work, Bram had barely noticed that he was physically ill.

After suffering a stroke, he was unconscious for twenty-four hours.

That lightning strike had come as a great shock to him, who'd always been so fit; and it explained much about the change in his appearance. His speech and general faculties were mostly unimpaired, although for some time his mobility had been badly affected. He said he'd always been too busy to notice the passing years, but in the last twelve months had found time to muse on the past, to consider his mistakes as well as his successes.

Florence, he confided, had shown unexpected strengths. His illness had brought them closer together than at any other time, and it was apparently thanks to her that he was walking again. She had nursed and bullied him back to health and strength, and, when things were at their worst, refused to let him give in to despair. I was pleased about that, if a little envious, and even found myself sympathising with her. Now Irving was out of the way, she had Bram to herself, and was evidently determined to make up for those difficult early years.

But, as Bram said, one thing Florence could not get over was Irving's will. When his estate was settled, out of more than £20,000, there were no tokens of appreciation for his oldest friend and colleague. Not so much as a memento to mark the years they'd shared at the Lyceum.

I too felt very angry about that.

On the high ground inland the sun was shining on snow, we could see it from the road. Last night's fog was still clinging to the clifftop, veiling the abbey ruins at ground level, so that turrets and gables seemed to be floating on a milk-white cloud.

The cab dropped us on Abbey Plain and at once were in the heart of it, veiled and cold and aware of a hard frost underfoot. Pulling my mantle up to my chin, I looked up at the ruins and shivered, asking myself whether this visit was such a good idea, after all. I remembered that first night with Bram, the bold way we'd trespassed, and the brazen way I'd encouraged him to take my virginity. I wondered what on earth had possessed me.

I glanced at Bram. He too was looking up at the smoky, mist-wreathed abbey; then he turned to me with a quirky, conspiratorial smile. I felt my own lips twitch, and, as the cab creaked away, we entered the churchyard together for the first time in more than twenty years. Apart from the cold it felt right, familiar, as though we'd been here only yesterday – or just a few months ago, last summer perhaps. Rimed with frost, the path looked treacherous in places, although the sexton had been out, scattering salt.

Since our last visit a tall new cross in the old style had been erected to commemorate the Anglo-Saxon poet Caedmon. We paused to view it, then continued along the path. Here and there we diverted to read the old favourites, memorials to long-dead explorers and master mariners who had sailed from the harbour below; and those seafarers dead in foreign places, whose wives and children had learned to endure the years alone. I thought of Jonathan then, squeezing my eyes tight shut against the sting of memory. Later, I thought; later, when Bram has gone, I will go to the chandlery, ask after him...

A slight stirring of air made the fog patchy, while here and there the sun broke through with dazzling beams of light. Across the way, the roofs and chimneys of the Royal Hotel kept miraculously appearing and disappearing like some castle in a fairy tale, but the grey chill between seemed ever-renewable. From where we were, it was impossible to see the sea, or to know where the cliff ended and infinity began. Despite Bram's assurances that we were safe enough on the path, I was afraid he might be tempted to stray. Ignoring his protests, I clung to his arm.

‘But I just want to see whether I can find that old table tomb,' he insisted. ‘There was a seat nearby, at a bend in the path – and the path divided what must have been two parts of the graveyard. Don't you remember? Where the old cholera burial ground would have been?'

He pointed ahead to the ghostly outline of a public bench that stood beside the path. Beyond it, to the right, I could see several upright stones illumined like soldiers on parade, but to the left was a blank wall of mist. As he strode confidently towards it, I had the most powerful sense of disaster.

‘No!' I exclaimed, leaping forward across the grass to grab his coat. As we stopped dead, I could see that no more than a yard or two of level ground remained. In front of us, the crisp white grass ended abruptly.

We stood there, trembling with shock, for several seconds. Then, very carefully, we edged back along the path. The bench, where Bram had so often waited for me in the past, provided most welcome rest. ‘How long,' he murmured softly, ‘do you think it's been like that?'

‘I don't know,' I said carefully. ‘Small sections keep falling all the time.'

‘I suppose Lucy's tomb could have disappeared years ago?' When I nodded, he squeezed my arm and said, ‘Thanks for stopping me. I was so sure I knew where it was.'

‘It was the fog,' I said bravely, but some instinct in me was aware of an uneasy presence, the ghost of Irving perhaps, or even the restless spirit which had given birth to the novel he disliked so much.
I
wish I'd left it there,
he'd said to me last night of that disturbing tale,
amongst the tombs of the east cliff.

~~~

We were both chilled through. It seemed a good idea to take refuge in the church, whose interior I knew less well than I might have done. Despite those ancient walls, I'd resisted the place while living here, out of a stubborn dislike for established custom as well as an insistence on pleasing myself. Yet I felt the atmosphere embrace us with welcome as soon as we entered.

The interior was less like a place of worship than like an old sailing ship, crowded with box pews and ancient galleries, and a mass of eighteenth-century furnishings. There were plain leaded windows and a shallow roof with skylights, which had surely been fashioned to withstand the ferocious northeasterly storms. I had a feeling it would be here until the cliff collapsed from under it, and even then that it would sail, like a well-founded schooner, across the seas to eternity.