Anno Dracula

41

LUCY PAYS A CALL

She walked with tiny steps to keep her skirts off the ground, as meticulous in her habits as any lady. Her new clothes, bought with John’s money, still had a little shop-scratch about them. Few, observing her evening promenade, would recognise the Mary Jane Kelly with whom they were familiar. She felt as she had in Paris, a new-made girl free of her sad history.

In Commercial Street a fine gentleman was helping a pretty vampire into a coach. Mary Jane paused to admire the couple. The gentleman was courtly without effort, his every gesture precise and perfect; and the girl was a beauty even in the mannish dress so many affected these nights, her skin a radiant white, her hair honeyed silk. The coachman lightly whipped his horse and the carriage moved off. Soon, she too would only travel in coaches. Drivers would touch their hats to her. Fine gentlemen would assist her through doors.

She walked up to the doors of Toynbee Hall. The last time she had been here, her face was burned black after an accidental touch of the sun. Dr Seward, not yet her John, had examined her closely but with no interest, as if looking over a likely racehorse. He had prescribed veils and a spell indoors. Now she came not as a supplicant, but to pay a call.

She tired of waiting for someone to open the doors for her and daintily pushed them inwards. She stepped into the foyer and looked about. A matron bustled through, a roll of bedding hugged to her chest. Mary Jane hemmed to attract attention. Her cough, intended as a ladylike little sound, emerged as a deep, somewhat vulgar, throat-clearing. She was embarrassed. The matron looked her in the face, lips pursed as if instantly aware of every filthy detail of Mary Jane Kelly’s past.

‘I have come to call on Dr Seward,’ Mary Jane said, trying hard with every word, every syllable.

The matron smiled unpleasantly. ‘And who shall I say is calling?’

Mary Jane paused, then said ‘Miss Lucy.’

‘Just Lucy?’

Mary Jane shrugged as if her name did not matter one whit. She did not care for the matron’s attitude and thought it meet she be put in her place. She was, all considered, only a kind of servant.

‘Miss Lucy, if you would care to follow me...’

The matron shoved through an inner door, and held it open with her cushion-like rump. Mary Jane passed through into a soap-smelling corridor and was led up a none-too-clean stairway. On the first-floor landing, the matron nodded towards a door.

‘Dr Seward will be in there, Miss Lucy.’

‘Thank you so much.’

Constrained by her burden, the matron attempted a creaky and impertinent curtsey. Suppressing nasty laughter, she sloped off up another staircase, leaving the visitor alone. Mary Jane had hoped to be announced, but contented herself with taking one hand from her muff and rapping on the office door. A voice from within rumbled something indistinguishable, and Mary Jane admitted herself. John stood at a desk with another, both poring over a pile of documents. John didn’t look up, but the other man – a young fellow, dressed well but not a gentleman – did, and was disappointed.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s not Druitt. Where can Monty have got to?’

John ran his finger down a column of figures, totalling them in his head. Mary Jane knew her numbers but could never put them together: it was the root of her problem with the rent. Finally, John finished his calculation, jotted something down and raised his glance. When he saw her, it was as if someone had struck his head from behind with the blunt end of a ball-peen hammer. Unaccountable tears pricked the backs of her eyes, but she kept them in.

‘Lucy,’ he said, without expression.

The young man straightened and brushed his lapels with his knuckles, presenting himself to be introduced. John shook his head as if trying to put together two mismatched halves of a broken ornament. Mary Jane wondered if she had done something terribly wrong.

‘Lucy,’ he said again.

‘Dr Seward,’ began the young man, ‘you are being remiss.’

Something inside John snapped and he began pretending everything was ordinary. ‘Do forgive me,’ he said. ‘Morrison, this is Lucy. My... oh, a family friend.’

Mr Morrison’s smirk was complex, as if he understood. Mary Jane thought she had seen him before; it was possible the young man knew her for who she was. She let him take her hand and bobbed her head slightly. A mistake, she knew at once; she was a lady, not a tweeny maid. She should have let Mr Morrison raise her hand to his lips, then nodded grudgingly as if he were the lowest thing on earth and she Princess Alexandra. For such an error, Uncle Henry would have taken the rod to her.

‘I’m afraid you find me frightfully preoccupied,’ John said.

‘One of our stalwarts has gone missing,’ Mr Morrison explained. ‘You wouldn’t have happened across a Montague Druitt on your travels?’

The name meant nothing to her.

‘I feared as much. I doubt that Druitt is much in your line, anyway.’

Mary Jane pretended not to know at all what Mr Morrison meant. John, still taken aback, was fiddling with some doctor’s implement. She began to suspect this social call to be not entirely a well-conceived endeavour.

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ Mr Morrison said, ‘I’m sure you’ve much to discuss. Miss Lucy, good night. Dr Seward, we’ll talk later.’

Mr Morrison withdrew, leaving her alone with John. When the door was firmly shut, she slipped close to him, her hands on his chest, her face by his collar, her cheek against the soft stuff of his waistcoat.

‘Lucy,’ he said, again. It was a habit of his, just to say the name out loud. He looked at Mary Jane, and saw the twice-dead girl in Kingstead.

His hands touched her about the waist, then climbed her back, finally fixing at her neck. Taking a grip, he pulled her away from him. His thumbs pressed under her chin. If she were warm, this might hurt. Her teeth grew sharp. John Seward’s face was dark, his expression one with which she was familiar. Sometimes, this look would pass over him when they were together. It was his brute self, the savage she found inside every man. Then, something mild sparked in his eyes and he let her go. He was shaking. He turned away and steadied himself against his desk. She smoothed the strands of her hair that had come loose, and rearranged her collar. In his rough grip, her red thirst had been aroused.

‘Lucy, you mustn’t...’

He waved her away but she took a hold on him from behind, easing his collar away from his neck, undoing his stock.

‘... be here. This is...’

She wet his old scars with her tongue, then opened them with a gentle bite.

‘... another part of...’

Intently, she sucked. Her throat burned. She shut her eyes and saw red in the darkness.

‘... my life.’

Taking her mouth from his neck for a moment, she chewed her glove, biting away the tiny shell buttons at her wrist. She freed her right hand and spat out the cloth skin. Her fingers had extended, nails splitting the seams. She reached into his clothes, displacing buttons. She stroked his warm flesh, careful not to cut. John moaned to himself slightly, lost.

‘Lucy.’

The name spurred her, put anger in her appetite. She tugged at his clothes, and bit again, deeper.

‘Lucy.’

No, she thought, gripping, Mary Jane.

Her chin and front were wet with his blood. She heard a choke in the back of his throat and felt him swallowing his own scream. He tried to say Lucy’s name again but she worried him harder, silencing him. For the moment, in this heat, he was her John. When it was over, she would dab her lips and be his dream Lucy again. And he would rearrange his clothes and be Dr Seward. But now they were their true selves; Mary Jane and John, joined by blood and flesh.