Page 125 of The Extraordinary Florence Stoker

‘Since the play has been staged,’ said Mr Liveright, crossing his legs, ‘sales of your late husband’s novel have been growing steadily each year. Twenty thousand copies annually are not to be sneezed at.’

Noel caught my eye. Mr Bang looked impressed. The man had done his homework. Still, twenty thousand sounded good until you factored in Mr Bang’s percentage.

‘But if I were to take it to America, I would only do it with my writer.’

‘Your writer?’ I asked. ‘And who might that be?’

Mr Liveright gave me a condescending smile. ‘I doubt you’d have heard of him,’ he said. ‘He’s a fellow American but based here in London. John Balderston.’

It was my turn to preen. ‘Ah, the man who adapted Henry James’s novel The Sense of the Past for the stage. What was the play called again, Noel?’ I smiled sweetly at my son.

Noel bit back a grin. ‘Berkeley Square, Mother.’

‘That’s it. A fine production.’ I turned a wide-eyed mien to Mr Liveright. He didn’t even have the grace to appear humbled.

‘His reputation has preceded him,’ said Mr Liveright. ‘I’ve already approached him and he’s keen.’ Mr Bang began to object; I cut him short with a gesture.

‘Anyway, Mr Stoker, Mr Bang, Mrs Stoker,’ said Mr Liveright. ‘I think I’ve said enough. Basically, I’d like to purchase the theatrical rights to Dracula and take a new version of it to American audiences.’ He sat back in the chair, hands interlaced in his lap. ‘What do you say?’

What I said (after he’d left) was that I’d only agree if I didn’t have to deal with Mr Liveright ever again. In his stead, the writer who’d adapted Henry James for the stage, Mr Balderston, carried out the negotiations, much to Mr Liveright’s consternation and, I imagine, fury at having been bested by an old woman.

Maybe there was another reason I was called Mrs Dracula: I still had bite.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

London, 1928

It was a late afternoon in December. I’d spent the day with Lucy and Nancy at an exhibition of Henry Moore’s works at the Warren Gallery. Afterwards, we’d had tea and cake at a delightful place in Oxford Street before I returned home exhausted. First warming my hands by the fire, I slumped into my chair, looking at the empty place on the settee where Moonbeam used to lie. It had been a few months since she died. Vera kept urging me to get another dog. I was tempted, but my heart was still too sore. Dogs brought such happiness, but their loss was more than I could bear. I reached for my handkerchief and dabbed my eyes, then pulled a blanket over my knees.

Sleet teased the window. Distant prattle, the grate of wheels, occasionally muffled as they passed through drifts, the rumble and smells of civilisation even as winter almost suffocated them, surrounded me. From the look of the lowering, steel-grey sky, heavy snow was on its way again. I would ask Vera to ensure the man who kept the paths clear also did the back steps. I’d almost fallen down them two weeks ago. If I hadn’t grabbed a hold of the railing, I’d be like my neighbour, poor Mrs Adamson, and abandoned in a nursing home for Christmas.

I thought back to my first Christmas in London and how overwhelmed I’d been by its vastness, its network of streets, its squashed terraces and grand old houses separated by swathes of green. Back then, they’d been gowned in white – a filthy slate-speckled white, to be precise. The greenery was still there, but over the years, the city had risen around me, growing taller and casting long shadows over the older buildings, dwarfing the past. The lazy brown river that rose and fell with the tides, froze near its banks, and always, always smelled, was a constant, only now it was spanned many times. If I listened hard enough, I was certain I could hear the growl and screech of trains crawling beneath the city like mechanical worms. I sighed. So much had changed. And not just in and around London.

I’d be spending Yuletide with Noel, Neelie and Ann. It would be a quiet gathering, so different to the raucous ones back in the day in Dublin, filled with blether and cartloads of children. Or those Bram and I enjoyed at the Lyceum, often in the Beefsteak Room, where Henry, in a lavish display of generosity, would provide golden roasted turkeys, glistening fattened geese, crunchy roasted potatoes, enormous Yorkshire puddings, tureens of unctuous gravy, plum puddings that oozed whisky and sherry, and all the other trappings for company members and invited guests. We’d drink, dance, laugh, reenact scenes from plays, relive missed cues and on-stage mishaps, imitate prominent members of the audience, and each other, falling about laughing and crying Encore! Encore!

Now I was the excess guest, the extra family member. The elder. Not really welcome but not unwelcome either. I was a responsibility. When had that happened? When had I gone from being on everyone’s invitation list to ‘we should invite her’?

I released a long, self-pitying sigh just as I spied a mother with three heavily coated children alighting from a cab and entering the shop opposite. I sat up and pulled back the curtain to see better. A man with a thick scarf snaked around his neck was walking his large dog, waiting patiently while it pissed against a lamppost. A pair of men in fine hats were busy watching two oblivious women in coats that swept their ankles eating hot chestnuts and licking their fingers.

Part of me envied young women today who could be so free with their choices. I’d see them striding to or from work in their neat skirts and buttoned jackets, crossing streets singly or in pairs, the cloche hats that were now so fashionable perched on cropped hair that, just a decade ago would have been deemed far too masculine a style for a real woman to wear. Only, these were real women: canny, clever, with ambitions and dreams they might even be able to fulfil – until they wed, that is. Marriage might be delayed for some, but it was still a woman’s best hope for a legitimate place in society, no matter who or what her husband. Women might be able to vote now the Equal Franchise Act had been passed, providing they were over twenty-one, but snaring a husband was still a woman’s supreme goal. I’d been raised to believe it was mine. To think, there were those who declared a new age of equity had been reached. Equity was different to equality. I was less convinced, knowing any gains my sex achieved would not only come at a cost but be resisted by men who felt threatened by female autonomy. The proof was in the wedding. Men didn’t have to be married to be taken seriously. But an unmarried woman of a certain age? As for older women, well, they were little more than a nuisance. Too old to breed, not attractive enough to be ornamental, they took up space and time.

I wondered what Bram would think about all this female emancipation. Clothing, hairstyles and habits reflected women’s new freedoms. Noel was supportive of them, but then his wife was well beyond the age to dress like a flapper and smoke, seek employment or to assert any other rights her new political status gave her. He could safely align himself with women without being regarded a traitor to his own sex. A part of me was grateful other, younger minds and hearts were taking on the men’s club that ruled us all.

While I might be too old to broadcast my liberty with short hair or modern dress, I was taking it up to the men. They might label me a ‘battleaxe’ or an ‘old witch’, and worse, but who else was going to care? That’s one thing I learned from the new women of today: if you don’t value your rights, no-one else will.

I continued to fight for Bram’s works, but it had taken its toll. What was the point of agreements, contracts, lawyers, negotiations, agents and societies if legal documents weren’t honoured, and in a timely fashion?

I drained the whisky and looked at the pile of letters awaiting my attention.

Turning the lamp to its brightest setting, I picked up the magnifying glass. Most were bills, though I was pleased to see a letter from Violet – an invitation by the looks of it – and a nice thick letter from Phil. But then another drew my attention. It wasn’t sealed very well, and I could spy what appeared to be a press cutting jutting out. I quickly opened it.

I must have exclaimed loudly, because Vera materialised at the door. ‘Is everything alright, missus?’ she asked.

I fell back in the chair and waved a careless arm towards her. ‘Read this newspaper clipping.’ I passed it to her. ‘It says not only has the Film Society here in London shown Nosferatu to all their members, but they were given permission by Universal Studios in America to do so. According to this, Universal Studios own the bloody film.’

Ellen had promised me the Society would never show the film again unless the rights were sorted. With her gone now, there was no-one to hold Mr Montagu and the board to account. Sorrow welled in my chest. Dead at the ripe old age of eighty-one of a brain bleed. God, my heart still pained me. What would she say about all this? Laugh and remind me, ‘Know thine enemy, Lemon!’

Vera quickly examined the cutting. She patted my shoulder reassuringly. ‘You left out the best bit.’